Correcting the situation is not going to be easy, but anyone can help in many different ways. Everyday little choices can make a big difference: conserving water, switching off lights, buying environment-aware products, reducing your amount of trash, driving less, voting for the correct candidates, educating kids and friends, and so forth.

Here are a few organizations working, one way or another, for the protection of the environment:

• Earth Watch
• Earth Share
• Conservation International
• Greenpeace
• Center for Global Development
• SafeClimate
• World Resources Institute

Linked to the ecological problems are the human problems: resources are unequally distributed. In 1997 about 16% of the world population accounted for about 80% of the money spent on private consumption. And it's getting worst.

Population growth, global warming, pollution, acid rains, wars, energy crisis... tired of hearing about those topics? Well, how do you think your children and grand-children will feel about them?

A topic related to our planet is the question of possible "intelligent life" somewhere else (since it's so rare on Earth). The SETI program (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is an fascinating project:

"SETI is a scientific effort seeking to determine if there is intelligent life outside Earth. SETI researchers use many methods. One popular method, radio SETI, listens for artificial radio signals coming from other stars. SETI@home is a radio SETI project that lets anyone with a computer and an Internet connection participate".

• SETI-at-home Web site
• Best signal candidates
• Current total statistics
• My small contribution

If nothing else, SETI at home is an alluring illustration of how computing power can be enhanced by many orders of magnitude when integrated with the Internet. The same principle used by this project can be applied to many other types of application.