Well, happy Earth Week.

You'd think that 38 years after the first Earth Day, we'd have a lot to celebrate. Instead, we Earthlings are polluting, wasting, consuming, and despoiling at a rapid pace. And our good old USofA is leading the way.

Right about the time of the first Earth Day, the country seemed moved by anti-littering television ads featuring a Native American crying. There's no such pro-environment ad campaign now, and littering is just a fraction of our problem.

The nation that thumbed its nose at the Kyoto treaty - and whose president has just now begun to stop smirking at global warming - consumes a disproportionate amount of the world's energy supplies, particularly oil. And the only thing we get upset about is its price.

Sunday's New York Times laid out our folly in depressing detail - and pointed to some steps we could take to change our ways (nytimes.com; keywords "The Big Thirst").

We consume about a fourth of the world's oil, the Times said, a lot of it for gasoline. We continue to cling to SUV's, which get abysmally poor gas mileage. We drive our cars and trucks a lot more miles than the residents of other countries do.

The vast majority of us get to work by driving - alone. And worse, our commutes are getting longer and longer.

The result: since 1980, our oil consumption has risen 21 percent.

What could we do about it? If we replaced only a quarter of our SUV's, vans, and pickups with cars, the Times says, we would reduce our gasoline consumption by 2.5 percent. We could save another 5 percent if we switched one of every four of our vehicles to diesel fuel.

The biggest savings: reduce the amount we drive by 25 percent, which would cut our gasoline use by 25 percent.

What would it take to get us to cut back on our driving? Curtailing sprawl would help a lot, obviously. But so would better public transit - which requires a willingness to use it. So would better and more extensive rail service. And plain old walking.

None of that would be painless, but it wouldn't be really hard. It would, though, require some sacrifice. And, perish the thought: government-led planning. And Americans - who rationed food, rubber, and gasoline during World War II, and whose families planted Victory Gardens and bought War Bonds - no longer tolerate sacrifice. And government-led planning might infringe on our individual rights.

On the home front: Rochester officials have released the results of an extensive "customer satisfaction" survey, and it's an interesting little snapshot of all of us.

Consultants questioned people who use city services - city residents, people who work in the city, city business owners, and city landlords - on a wide variety of issues. Their findings? We're a pretty happy bunch.

We're worried about crime and taxes, but we give better than average marks to most of the services that City Hall provides. We like our sports teams, and we patronize the city's restaurants and clubs. And 69 percent of us think the city's "moving in the right direction."

(Interesting stats: 79 percent of us use the parks, 74 percent go to the Public Market, and 62 percent use the libraries. But only 47 percent attend arts and cultural events, and only 43 percent attend sports events.)

I did find one question curious: "Do you care, or not care, whether your water is provided by the City or the County?" Seventy-five percent of us don't care, according to the survey.

The city and the county are in negotiations about that very issue. The county has wanted to get its hands on the city's water system for a long time. If the city doesn't strike the right deal, we could end up being very, very sorry. So I'd count myself in the 22 percent of people who do care.

Maybe tucking this question into the survey means nothing. I'm just putting it out there....

(You can read the full, 148-page report on the City Hall website: cityofrochester.gov.)