Lubber is president of Ceres, a national coalition of investors and public-interest groups focused on environmental issues. Yesterday she was one of the Globe magazine's "earth angels," briefly profiled with five others as part of the issue's green focus.

Today, she's an op-ed contributor, making excellent points that will one day seem so obvious that everyone will wonder why, and rue, that they weren't conventional wisdom.

I recently got to meet a couple of inspired, committed people who are putting their environmental concerns and principles into deep, broad effect across their pursuits.

Sajed Kamal teaches about sustainability at Brandeis, but has traveled the globe — including in his native India and in his childhood home of Bangladesh — to aid renewable energy projects. He's got a small solar cell installed on his window sill and has almost a half-dozen solar cookers around his apartment. He led two solar installations in the Fenway, where he lives.

Another in a series of miniprofiles of sustainability-minded people who are working to reduce humankind's footprint on the planet.
BRIAN BUTLER, 40, Somerville
Owner, Boston Green Building BGB is a general contractor specializing in sustainable building. "Our focus is making general contracting as green as it can be, given the scope of a given client’s resource and projects," said Butler, who is married with a son.

If you want the Prager who knows and values the outdoors, you want my brother, Richard: National Outdoor Leadership School, Outward Bound Minnesota, solo Appalachian Trail hiker from Georgia to Maine, scaler of all the 4,000-plus-feet peaks in New Hampshire, New York State School of Forestry graduate degree, all before age 25, and 10 years (maybe it was only 5) as president of the Simsbury (Conn.) Land Trust.

Me, I got nothin', as JS would say.

Taken altogether, I can't imagine too many minds were made up by the debate last night. I wouldn't say it was boring, but it certainly was even, and contained no shockers. I heard one pundit opine that Obama had succeeded in making his case for commander and chief, and McCain had successfully made his case against Obama as president.

I remain unsatisfied with the candidates' energy discussions, and Obama added another burr last night, when Jim Lehrer pressed both candidates on the initiatives they might have to forego or delay as the result of the financial bailout.

It's not ready yet, so this is premature, but at least I can say you heard about it here first... Asknature.org is a database being prepared by the Biomimicry Institute of Montana that will allow users to explore the natural world for solutions to problems that people are trying to solve. That's what biomimicry is.

RGGI is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of 10 states in the Northeast that has been planning the nation's first cap-and-trade system designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I wrote about it in March.

When encountering crap such as this from the other side of the partisan divide, I try to put myself in their shoes, or perhaps to envision a situation in which I'm guilty of the same practice and imagine how they might feel.

This time, I can't, though you are certainly welcome to help me through my myopia, if you see it.

Another in a series of miniprofiles of sustainability-minded people who are working to reduce humankind's footprint on the planet.

LARRY CHRETIEN, 47, Quincy

The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's annual open house is coming up on Saturday, Oct. 4.

Hundreds of buildings will be open across 10 states from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. A family event will take us out to western Mass. that day, so I'm looking forward to checking out some sites I wouldn't likely have seen otherwise.

Follow this link to a directory of buildings that you can search by zip code, or by green feature (gray-water use, geothermal, grid-tied solar, or whatever).