I'm slow to the post on this one, but if you hadn't heard, John McCain has proposed a summer holiday from federal gas taxes, to ease the effect of high-market prices during the summer touring season. Unthinkers will love it — they save a few bucks at the pumps, and gee, ain't John a swell guy for looking out for us? Except he is not. Taxes — which I don't like, and no one likes, and gosh wouldn't it be swell if everything were free — are going to be one of the ways we change over from a carbon-based economy to a renewable one.

The words of author Jim Kunstler more than a month ago at a NESEA-sponsored forum still ring in my ears: "We're not going to organize our way out of [the climate crisis], and we're not going to tech our way out of it." I don't know if he's right (though I have to say that strong, declarative statements, forcefully stated from a public platform, do have a weight of their own), but he has certainly influenced my outlook. I thought of it several times at the show that followed, such as at BigBelly Solar's booth.

Sorry, Second Rotation, for calling you a leftover, and I do so only in the sense that I didn't follow up soon after the show.

Second Rotation has figured out a way to profit from buying used cell phones, computers, cameras, gaming consoles, GPSs, and other electronic gizmos that are sitting in your drawer, unused. (If you've already sent them to the landfill, too late.)

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.