This is a three-minute-plus teaser for a "Frontline" inquiry into global climate change politics. The show looks good, and I'll definitely be tuning in. But even if you're not excited by the prospect, check out the video anyway. It begins with the Talking Heads song "Burning Down the House," which, in this context, appears to have been written as the climate-change anthem: "Watch out, you might get what your after..." and "We might be in for nasty weather..." and, of course, "Burning down the house." Brilliant.

In about a month, the greatest one-city, one-year confluence of green-building events ever (ever!) will culminate when GreenBuild, the annual trade show of the US Green Building Council, comes to Boston.

As if to underscore the confluence, highlighted by the American Institute of Architects' national convention in May and the annual NESEA show in March, the three-day show will overlap with BuildBoston, a regional show put on annually by the Boston Society of Architects.

Another in a series of miniprofiles of sustainability-minded people who are working to reduce humankind’s footprint on the planet. To recap, they're "mini" not only because they're short, but because all the questions are 10 words or less, and the answers are requested to match. Please, no counting.

Georgie and I have trekked twice to Western Mass. recently to check out green buildings (though the first time, we had the added incentive of attending our niece's 7th birthday party.

I'm not a scientist, so I have no standing to question scientific assertions. But still.

Carbon Sciences, based in Santa Barbara and Cambridge, England, says it is developing "... a breakthrough technology to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other portable fuels."

Another in a series of miniprofiles of sustainability-minded people who are working to reduce humankind’s footprint on the planet. To recap, they're "mini" not only because they're short, but because all the questions are 10 words or less, and the answers are requested to match. Please, no counting.
 
GABRIEL ERDE-COHEN, 24, Jamaica Plain Green City Growers

I usually synopsize what the subject does, but this time, I thought Gabriel said it so well, I'd just let him speak: "We build and maintain backyard farms on people’s private land for the benefit of them and their family. It’s like having a personal CSA. [CSA, as in "community supported agriculture." Generally, farms sell shares of their output before the growing season to lessen their market risk.] "We also acquire and do bioremediation on brownfields [land tainted by past industrial activity] in the city of Boston for the purpose of turning them into city farms and educational centers. "Our newest program is consulting, designing, and building urban homesteads, which are completely sustainable homes and communities within the city. That’s the dream."

My default position on corporations is pretty lefty, that they are not unlike stiff dicks — driven to get what they want, not caring about anything else. Pretty much of all them are chartered for self-preservation with blinders to social interests or social costs.

But I've been opening to a more nuanced position, based on the experiences of Adam Werbach and Wal Mart, and to a lesser extent, the writings of Joel Makower.

350.org, an climate-crisis action organization that I've written about before (here and here), is asking people to send word to both presidential candidates, urging them to attend the Conference of the Parties, a global governmental gathering in Poland in December, a post-Kyoto next step toward global cooperation for the environment.

The first stop on our personal version of the Green Buildings Open House tour on Saturday was off the beaten path, if not the grid, to the several buildings of the Sirius Community in Shutesbury. Even before we arrived, the last dot of the Prius's gas gauge was blinking, with no gas stations in sight for several miles back.