When John Allore read in The Chapel Hill News last August about Carrboro residents Tracey Oliveto and Jerry Stifelman rationing their air conditioning he was impressed. As a Canadian living in North Carolina, however, it's the winter time when Allore shows his own green credentials -- this year he is hoping to get through until spring without using the heating at all. While the environmental benefits are important, for Allore it is as much about comfort as anything else:

"Where I come from, you just put another sweater on," he said. "And when it's bed time, you just get in bed! How warm do you need it when you are under the covers?"

Having said that, Allore remembers an ice storm four or five years ago. "I'm not going to make any hard-and-fast promises," he says.

A self-confessed AC-addict and energy hog in the summer, Allore is careful to underline that he is no saint. He describes himself as a fair weather environmentalist. However, there are certain issues that drive him crazy about the way people waste resources today.

"At the moment the water thing drives me crazy, especially now," he says. "I drive by a house very morning that has the greenest lawn you could imagine -- in the middle of a drought. It's just plain wrong."

When asked why green issues are striking such a chord with people right now, he argues that it's as much about a desire for something beyond empty materialism as it is about any particular crisis, such as global warming:

"When you get to my age, and I'm in my forties, there's this engrained idea that you are supposed to consume more and more. But I realized I was never like that. Why should I now want more and more stuff? I hate stuff -- it just chokes you."