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From the Prius to hemp sheets, it's finally become "cool" to be eco-conscious (if your well off financially):

Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight - careful to buy carbon offsets beforehand - and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an eco-resort in the Maldives.

How many of us buy stuff with the environment in mind?

Some 35 million Americans regularly buy products that claim to be earth-friendly, according to one report, everything from organic beeswax lipstick from the west Zambian rain forest to Toyota Priuses. With baby steps, more and more shoppers browse among the 60,000 products available under Home Depot's new Eco Options program.

And the Prius tops the list of "cool" products to own:

"I really want people to know that I care about the environment," said Joy Feasley of Philadelphia, owner of a green 2006 Prius. "I like that people stop and ask me how I like my car."

In fact, more than half of the Prius buyers surveyed this spring by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., said the main reason they purchased their car was that "it makes a statement about me."

Prius sales for the first six months of the year are up 93.7 percent from last year, to 94,503, and Toyota has already sold close to as many Prius cars as it did in all of 2006.

Alas, this "coolness" factor has spawned off a whole new line of thinking by hardline environmentalists:

Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes calls "light greens."

And hence, we've entered into a new phase of questioning all green consumption:

Critics question the notion that we can avert global warming by buying so-called earth-friendly products, from clothing and cars to homes and vacations, when the cumulative effect of our consumption remains enormous and hazardous.

"There is a very common mind-set right now which holds that all that we're going to need to do to avert the large-scale planetary catastrophes upon us is make slightly different shopping decisions," said Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability issues.

The genuine solution, he and other critics say, is to significantly reduce one's consumption of goods and resources. It's not enough to build a vacation home of recycled lumber; the real way to reduce one's carbon footprint is to only own one home.

As with most things in life, there really aren't any shortcuts.

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