There's plenty of hype in the media, and few facts. The facts I do see come from scientific journals and they don't seem to have a clear answer. There is nothing near a consensus that global warming is a fact, or that it's tied to humans at all.

Meanwhile I found these comparisons very interesting:

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

HOUSE # 1:

A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.

HOUSE # 2:

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."

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Clearly the term environmentalist is disambiguous.

Strangely enough I had heard of the impressive technology implemented in the President’s Texas ranch house. Read all about it in a very liberal-minded Norwegian newspaper. ;)

Let's not forget that house #2 is in Texas, the most polluted state in the union, and its owner is at least partially responsible for that fact. House #1 is an old home that is being retrofitted to be more efficient. Gore has had to fight just to be allowed to add solar panels, so it will take time. Remodeling is a long, expensive process, but in the end it is better than building new because it takes a house that is wasting energy and makes it permanently more efficient.

A moral question – with easy answers
 

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I still remember the progressive building code of Davis, California, where I attended university. Thanks to just a few simple rules about overhangs over windows etc, housebuilders were "compelled" to build homes that made sound, common-sense use of passive solar energy. Not complicated, not draconian.

I am told that in the 1950s a lot of American buildings/homes had solar water heaters on their roofs: glass-covered boxes lined in black, through which water pipes ran. Somehow, those "disappeared".

There are a lot of sensible things that can be done that require hardly any money at all, and certainly not high-tech inventions. My own energy bill fell by about 40% or so after we installed two heat pumps five years ago.

The way I look at it is simple: We are all sitting at a shared table. I was taught to not help myself to more than I could eat, nor more than my fair share. I believe that applies to countries as well as individuals.

That makes our choice of energy policy, cars, etc a moral issue.
And we do, thankfully, have the freedom to make those choices.

well, it simply got bigger and it become more dangerous for our planet :(

Wow! I thought that the hole was shrinking, but it seems that the CFC ban has only slowed the destruction, not reversed it.