Actually, that's RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, but friends call him "Reggie." It is the first of three multistate consortiums moving to reduce climate-harming gas emissions via a cap-and-trade system.

Gov. Deval Patrick delighted an estimated 1,ooo people at this morning's opening session of Building Energy '08 by saying that he's forming a Zero Net Energy Buildings task force. He said he's asking the group to give him recommendations for construction practices in time for this conference next year and to have the specifications in force soon afterward.

I mentioned previously that Building Energy '08, a trade show and conference run by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, was coming up, and now it's here. The main event today was a two-hour open forum on energy efficiency and sustainability that was fascinating, inspiring, depressing, and annoying, in parts.

Far from Obama-Clinton, my dream pairing would be Obama and Al Gore.

I concede that there is infinitessimally little chance of this happening that it is sophomoric to expend even these next few electrons on it. But, hey, they're only electrons.

Via Green Building Elements, I got to read this post by Dr Buzz0 (not "bozo," though close) at depletedcranium.com in which he addresses the top 10 things environmentalists need to understand. In his about-the-author section, he says he's very active in the skeptic and debunking community, which gives context for his post.

Switching to lower-energy-use CFL lightbulbs and driving a hybrid car are good responses to the planet's climate crisis, says Lester Brown, the internationally recognized climate-change advocate, but the most important step a concerned citizen can take is to become politically active, he told a near capacity crowd at Cary Hall in Lexington Sunday night.

"Saving civilization is not a spectator sport," he said near the end of his hour-plus address, using the sort of sweeping language that characterized his remarks.

It was a sure bet that the headlines on Earl Butz's obit this week would focus on the racial slur that torpedoed his public life, and it was in every one I saw. But Butz, agriculture secretary under Nixon and Ford in the '70s, was perhaps one of the most influential figures in 20th century America, although not exactly in a salutary way. He blessed, and hastened, the demise of the family farm, for example, stating baldly and  unapologetically that farming was now the domain of corporations, and the family farmer would just have to get used to it.

It's hard to know what's up with the Bush administration's decision to pull funding for the so-called "FutureGen" coal plant that was awarded only a couple of months ago to downstate Mattoon, Ill. The reason given by Energy Secretary Sam Bodman is that costs have grown beyond reason, but not surprisingly, the coal and oil companies behind FutureGen are disputing that.

LOVE THIS from Think Progress, which points out that CNN's Republican debate, the last one before Super Tuesday, is sponsored by some front for the coal industry. And, no questions have been asked on global warming, it says, in the past four debates.

Obviously, I'm not running for office, ever.

And, I assure you, I'm as money-focused as my fellow Americans. I would like to earn more, while doing less. I would like to win the lottery. Get a huge inheritance from some surprising source. Have an even nicer computer. Build a wicked cool off-the-grid-but-still-warm-and-comfortable house, with a nice view. Further hybridize our Prius to make it even more efficient. Or get one of them Teslas!