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. As regular readers know, Georgie and I have changed our bulbs (to the extent that we can), replaced our drafty windows, bought a hybrid car, and taken a number of other actions in our household. And two recent door-to-door stints for the New England Wind Fund have finally put me into the community-action column as well. I have to say that I feel somewhat disenfranchised — in the best possible way — by having Ed Markey as my congressman. He's the chairman of the select committee on energy independence and global warming already, so it's not like I can petition him to care more about global warming. Yes, there's plenty to be done, but just as when, as a Massachusetts voter, my presidential preference never matters, because we always know where our electoral votes are going, any of my entreaties to my federal representatives are urging them to be who they are. "In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis, and we have one." This echoes, of course, what Lester Brown said at his talk in Lexington recently. He said we have everything we need except political will. And Bill McKibben touched on it too, when he spoke at d2e. "What's needed is a higher level of consciousness." I know he's right about this, because I care deeply about these matters, and still, it's felt hard to move from thought to action on all these fronts. (We could have/should have done the more efficient windows and back door when we remodeled, but frankly, that didn't occur to me when we were planning that huge process! How could it not, and yet, it didn't; it wasn't until afterward that I realized I should have looked for a green architect and a green builder. As you know, we especially loved our builder, Harry Chehames of Ceder Builders, but while he was quite willing to meet the green-tinted requests we did make, it's not his way of operation otherwise. So if G. and I struggle to put our climate-change concerns into practices, it helps me see the magnitude of the task of change ahead. Plenty of stats, including several cited by Gore, show that people are definitely thinking about climate-change issues and willing to incorporate climate-change alterations into their lifestyles. What we need now is to convert that thought and willingness into action. Clearly, undeniably, unquestionably, political action is the first priority. But there are a hundred steps you can take, some of which I listed here. If you're not doing anything, may I suggest you just pick one, to start? Are if you are, how about picking just one more?