Michael Prager

I used to read Apartment Therapy regularly when I was editor of the Life at Home section, but as a cleansing after that job disappeared, I redid almost all my favorites and I'd not thought of it again until this week, when my sister, Judy, sent me a link from an AT derivative site, re-nest.com.

I intend my headline more in a philosophical sense than literal, since this isn't the first I've heard that there is a backlog in wind-turbine construction. This story from CNet News's excellent green tech blog says that GE calculates its backlog at $12 billion, up a billion just in the past quarter, and more than twice its size just a year ago.

My friend and former colleague Dave Beard spent his Saturday at the MIT Energy Conference and came up with a trio of posts I would have been proud to write myself: The keynote speaker was Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, the 12th largest CO2 emitter in the world. He told the crowd that he knows they have to produce less, which is startling to hear from such an impressive coal burner as himself.

I encountered boosters for the Better World Club at the recent Down 2 Earth trade show. It says it's better than Triple-A, and maybe it is. I'm a Triple-A member and have found it good enough but not outstanding, so I'm neither seeking an alternative or wedded to what I have. As you can imagine from its name and from the venue it bought table space at, BWC touts itself as a being more eco-minded. Among its offerings are: * Roadside assistance for bicycles as well as cars * They donate 1% of revenues to environmental clean-up and advocacy.

You can't cruise the sites that discuss global warming for too long without running into a shitstorm between those who believe in the dangers of climate change — and that humankind is causing it — and those who don't. As anyone knows, these fights are always drawn along liberal-conservative lines. But why? Is it belief in the rectitude of corporations, that if a company wants something, it must be good? But then why wouldn't the people who support subsidies for Big Oil not also support them for Little Solar, or whatever?

Several green sites this morning have video of Al Gore speaking at the Ted sessions in February in Monterey, Calif. Sadly, though I'm sure it's possible, I've not figured out to have video on this blog, so you're stuck (oops, wait, come back!) with a couple of notes I took away from it... "Change the light bulbs, but also, change the laws," Gore said.

Apparently, Mayor Menino is announcing a $550,000 initiative today to make Boston a solar city, whatever that means. The info, from boston.com, is pretty sketchy, such as where the money comes from and just what it does.

If you're even just barely paying attention to green topics these days, you have at least heard about LEED, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. But I'd wager you haven't yet heard about Regreen, which was unveiled only last month. You could think of Regreen as "LEED for home renovations and design," if not for several big reasons that you can't.

Like who cares, but I happened to notice as I was opening this window that it's my 300th post. And it's about ... someone else's posts. Worldchanging.com has had a couple of good ones in the past couple of days: Alex Steffen wonders about the freebies that are available to the energy-efficient, and cites as an example the Freeaire system for refrigeration units.

The first time I was exposed to the notion that water rights would provoke warring among nations was back in college, where it was an interesting concept but hardly seemed imminent.

Now, as detailed by Sarah Schweitzer in the Globe this morning, the fight has even come to central Mass.