Some say we are merely lilting into a deep recession while others claim we are headed into complete societal collapse.

Either way, the levers acting upon us are generally so inconceivably complex that they are incomprehensible. Take peak oil. Maybe global oil production has peaked and the days of cheap fuel are gone forever, or maybe we got oil that we ain't even found yet.

Or take climate change. It could be that by parking our carbon waste in earth's atmosphere we have inexorably altered nature. Or maybe drought just happens.

By the time I ponder war and national indebtedness and the value of a U.S. dollar, the scale of the challenges we face rapidly exceeds my ability to do anything about it. Maybe there is a God. Maybe it will take care of us.

In the mean time I've come to the conclusion that the only scale I can comprehend is the scale of "me."

Since I believe that human activity is responsible for climate change, I have gone to work on my carbon footprint. Since I believe that taking two barrels of oil out of the ground for every new barrel we find is unsustainable, I have hitched my wagon to biodiesel.

A critical part of my examination of changing "the scale of me" lies with food. Which means I have become a local food fanatic.

This has accidentally served me well in terms of my budget, and my health, and it worked great the other night at Pazzo!, the Italian place in Southern Village.

As we were being seated, my youngest son said out loud, "Dad, isn't this the place where you got that local food critic job?"

I jokingly cursed out loud and asked him not to blow my cover. I'm pretty sure the exchange made it back to the staff -- from the looks we received the rest of the night. But as always the food was excellent. And the service was awesome. And like many dinner spots in the area Pazzo has focused on getting locally grown food on the menu.

It is true that it is still possible to stump the bartender when I pull up a stool at a Chapel Hill bar and say, "Do you have any local beer?"

On the scale of me, that's simple. I'm not interested in drinking beer from far away. We have local breweries. All I have to do is choose establishments that sell the local brews.

The "Scale of Me" is something I control. And something I can understand.

It appears our economy may be in recession anyway -- despite the fact that Uncle Sam mailed us all fat checks to go out and spend. I thought about spiting the powers that be and saving my economic stimulus payment, but instead I immediately spent it all on local fuel, and local food, and services in our local economy.

Call me patriotic. Apparently it is a virtue to spend instead of save.

Surely the "Scale of Me" does not apply to the economy as a whole. On my scale I need to earn more than I spend. On my scale I like to save a bit for a rainy day. Whether it is energy, or money, I like to put a little more into the pot than I take out. That's a simple definition of sustainability.

On the "Scale of Me" I like to burn less electricity in the house than the solar array makes in the yard. On the "Scale of Me" I like to do the limbo with my fuel consumption. Once I have the most efficient car I can buy the trick is to drive less.

And I can do that too. It's hard for me to drive up or down the Moncure Road nowadays without waving to someone I know. Surely we have carpool opportunities that we have yet to explore.

Last winter Thomas Friedman came to town to give a speech and to play some golf. I was delighted to see him speak. He genuinely wants to save the world, and he is attempting to comprehend the grand scale. In his remarks he noted that the Hare Krishna were wonderful, but that they don't scale very well,

I don't want to be a Hare Krishna. But I do want to make a difference. And the difference I can comprehend is the scale of me.