Michael Pollan is like, real smart and stuff.

April means Earth Day, and that means a whole lotta annual Green Issues. Many of these publications are not worth the non-FSC-certified paper they were printed on, but some are interesting, informative and smart, like this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Michael Pollan's pro-garden treatise, "Why Bother?" was especially good. Here, whet your appetite with some amuse-bouche:

...The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it's one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren't that great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can't prove that it will.

If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand...Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed...Not having things might become cooler than having them.

Now that's a place I aspire to.

I think you can read the whole magazine online. Try it: you'll like it.