Can the way we spend our money bring back the snows of Kilimanjaro? It's an idea I'm taking very seriously these days. In 1983, the first time I trekked around this iconic mountain, it was still heavily frosted. By the time my husband and I took our children back in 2000, we were stunned. The ice fields capping Africa's best-known landmark had shrunk so much, the dome looked more like a minefield than the sky-high "cupcake" we'd promised the kids. Now scientists are saying the snows will be gone altogether by 2020.

I've spent years lobbying Congress and companies to enact policies that would reverse global warming, which climate scientists call a key cause of Kilimanjaro's snow melt, to almost no avail.

I'm ready to try something new. Shopping, anyone?

Normally, the mall would be the last place I'd go if I wanted to solve an environmental problem. After all, runaway consumerism has played no minor role in the collapse of the planet, given the energy, water, land, and other resources required to produce all the stuff people buy...and buy...and buy.

But what if I and millions of other concerned shoppers could use our consumer clout to pressure companies to save energy, protect forests, use safer ingredients, and otherwise become more responsible environmental citizens? Would we even need Congress to pass a law or haggle over a regulation? Hmm...

In fact, we're already succeeding. Take cars, for instance. Consumers have initiated the startling turnaround of a reluctant industry. For at least 30 years, American car companies resisted manufacturing highly fuel-efficient models despite our country's increasingly precarious dependence on foreign oil, soaring asthma rates related to car-generated smog, and, of course, growing concerns about the climate change caused by burning fossil fuels.

Cars generate about 25 percent of the carbon dioxide in the U.S. that contributes to global warming. A typical car that gets 20 miles per gallon will emit about 50 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. By contrast, a 40-miles-per-gallon vehicle will emit half that much. Wow! We could make a significant dent in climate change just by buying and driving more fuel-efficient autos-if only car companies would produce enough of them.

It took a while for the industry to come around. The battle for and against gas-savers remained at an impasse for decades, until 1999, the year Honda brought its Insight hybrid to the U.S. The Toyota Prius followed in 2000. Both models clocked at least 50 mpg, well above the current U.S. car average of 27.5.

I jumped at the chance to buy a Prius, and I wasn't alone. By 2004, American drivers were buying 88,000 hybrids a year-less than 1 percent of the total number of vehicles sold, but enough to force Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler to do what no legislation or citizen lobbying had: persuade the Big Three to start manufacturing hybrids themselves.

Now, U.S. automakers can't introduce their own hybrids into the marketplace fast enough. Of course, on Capitol Hill, they're still resisting higher fuel-efficiency standards. But in the marketplace? They want to sell as many hybrids as they can. That's the power of the purse.

Global warming isn't the only issue I can focus my purse power on. What about some of the 20 or so personal-care products I use every day? I'm happy to shampoo, deodorize, sanitize, and soften my body with the soaps, conditioners, makeup, lotions, and cleansers that abound. But the various chemicals they contain-and the cancers and other health problems they've been linked to-worry me. Consumers are deciding they don't want to be exposed this stuff anymore. Now, even nail polish, with its tell-tale toxic smell, is going green.

In the spring of 2006, cosmetics company Sally Hansen and two salon brands, Orly International and OPI Products, began reformulating their nail polishes to omit a chemical called dibutyl phthalate (DBT). DBT increases polish flexibility, but it's also suspected of interfering with our endocrine system, a mechanism that influences almost every cell, organ, and function of our bodies, including growth, development, and reproduction. Banned from cosmetics in Europe, the chemical is legal in the U.S., although it's considered a reproductive toxin by the state of California.

What prompted executives to forgo DBT? "Changing consumer trends," according to Bruce MacKay, the vice president for scientific affairs at Del Laboratories, the maker of Sally Hansen nail polish. That's a delicate way of saying, "Consumers made me do it."

Those who flock to more eco-friendly products, such as Honeybee Gardens nail polish, which never contained DBT, can take the credit for setting those trends and for showing all of us how much power we have in the marketplace.

Turns out, I can flex my green money muscles when it comes to coffee, too. After oil, coffee is the most valuable commodity in the world. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the U.S., the world's largest coffee consuming country, where more than half of all Americans down three to four cups a day.

Coffee is grown around the equator, which also happens to provide prime habitat for wildlife and endangered ecosystems, including tropical birds and rain forests.

One variety of coffee grows naturally in the shade, where it thrives in a diverse and healthy rain-forest environment. But to accelerate coffee production, the industry cultivated a sun-loving species on plantations carved from clear-cut rain forests that are doused with pesticides. This has become the dominant coffee crop; it's particularly tough on the songbirds that rely on healthy rain forests to survive.

Thanks to eco-conscious consumer demand, shade-grown coffee has started making a comeback. Most major supermarkets, as well as Starbucks and "big box" stores such as Target, now sell shade-raised java. Two percent of the market has been converted so far, and demand is growing, converting more "sun coffee" growers to shade along with it.

Even Harry Potter has gotten into the act. This summer, the 12 million U.S. copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived printed on almost 11,000 tons of post-consumer waste fiber, the technical term for high-quality recycled paper. No law requires Harry's story to be bound in a socially and ecologically responsible way. The magic comes from consumer demand for books printed on paper that protects forests.

Does all this eco-shopping really make a difference? Yup. Consider the lowly lightbulb. If every American home replaced just one incandescent bulb with an Energy Star compact fluorescent lamp, we'd save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent global warming gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars. Every ton of recycled paper that Harry Potter uses not only saves 17 trees but also conserves approximately four barrels of oil, offsetting additional carbon dioxide (and providing enough energy to heat and air-condition the average North American home for almost six months). We're already starting to turn these markets around.

At a time when solutions to many environmental problems are mired in endless political wrangling and obstinate corporate maneuvering, it's empowering to know that we consumers can get things done our own way. In fact, shifting our spending to greener products and services seems not only like the savviest way to entice corporations to make environmental changes they'd otherwise resist, but it can also actually persuade the government to follow our lead. That organic standard the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally created that's given farmers such an incentive to grow pesticide-free produce? It never would have happened if millions of consumers hadn't spent so much money on organic apples, grapes, lettuce, and carrots first.

Will these gains make much difference to Mt. Kilimanjaro, or to the many other places on Earth that are already experiencing severe climate-change shocks? In all honesty, probably not. But they should help slow down or even prevent future shocks from occurring. Indeed, that's what I'm counting on.

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