If you take a look around, then the signs of America going green are everywhere. People drive hybrid cars, use compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycle everything from paper to glass. We are a people who are doing a lot to save the planet. But there seems to be one area where we are not doing all we could.

When it comes to diapers, there doesn't seem to be a big push to switch to cloth. Even the greenest of the green still use disposable diapers. I know this because of a bizarre encounter I had with an eco nut whose kid was wearing Pampers.

I was at the park with my kids drinking bottled water when a lady I didn't know walked up to me and said, "I can't believe you are drinking bottled water. Do you know what you're doing to the environment? And besides, it's no better than tap water."

I didn't know what to say to this lady. Okay, I did know what to say to her but that would have been very rude. I'm not drinking water from a bottle because I see it as a status symbol. It's not like I'm saying: "Hey, look I'm drinking tap water out of a bottle! Ain't I special?"

Despite what some people may think, there are those of us drinking water from bottles because we rarely see water fountains. If I could go into the nearest restaurant and have them fill up a bottle with cold water, then I would do it. If the parks in the Denver Metro Area had water fountains, then I would drink from them.

In my hometown, there were water fountains everywhere. Almost every park had a fountain and I sipped from them frequently. I do what I have to do to stay hydrated. But I digress.

So this lady makes her remark to me and stands there waiting for me to respond. She had me on the ropes, or so she thought. I wanted to say something crude, but that's no way to treat a lady, even one who should know to mind her own business. Perhaps taking my silence as a weakness, the lady pressed her luck. "What kind of example are you setting for your children?" she asked.

At that point, I had to say something. I wasn't going out like a punk. I looked around and found a weakness that I could exploit. The woman's child was wearing a disposable diaper. So I chose that as my target. "You have some nerve lecturing me. Why don't you do the Earth a favor and use cloth diapers?" I asked.

That's all it took to rattle the woman. Moments later, she scooped up her child and was gone. I felt like raising my arms in victory and running around the playground shouting, "I'm the greatest of all time! You say something to me, you better be prepared to take a verbal beat down!"

I'll admit it was a jerky thing to say, especially in light of the fact that my kids all wore Pampers, Huggies, or whatever store brand was on sale that week. I didn't do the cloth diaper thing and doubt that I could do it today, even if celebrities were touting it as the latest thing they were doing to save the planet.

The more I thought about what I like to refer to as the "save the planet" incident, I wondered why celebrities are so quiet about cloth diapers. Shouldn't someone be speaking out? Maybe Woody Harrelson should talk about the benefits of hemp diapers.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, the lady who ran our birthing class was big on cloth diapers. Not only did she talk about saving the planet, but she talked about saving cold, hard cash. "You'll save enough money that you'll be able to take a vacation to some island paradise," she said.

We lived in a beach community in Southern California at the time, so I wasn't impressed by the idea of going to the Caribbean. I felt that So Cal was paradise enough for us to use disposable diapers, even if it cost more money.

The same day of the incident, I asked my wife, "If we had to do it all over, do you think we would use cloth diapers?"

My wife wouldn't answer the question right away. I took a sip of tap water and waited for her response. I began to think about the 3.5 island vacations (one of the kids was slow getting out of diapers) we could have taken, and I became convinced that I would be willing to give it a try.

"I don't know. Cloth diapers can be messy," my wife finally answered.

"That's where the island vacations come in," I replied. "The whole time you're dealing with the mess, you think, 'when this kid is potty trained, I will relax on a beach somewhere with all the money we saved by being green.'"

"Maybe," she said.

I took another drink of tap water, and wondered what my nemesis was doing to save the planet.