“Are you here for the charrette?” asked a friendly, dark-haired woman in a black coat, who was standing by the path to the door. I said I was, and she handed me a piece of paper. “This is just a guide to some of the language they’ll be using inside,” she explained with a pleasant smile. I took it, thanked her, and continued walking, reading as I went.

The first item on the list said, “You are about to be manipulated.” Hm, I thought. That’s sort of an odd approach, but probably intended to get us thinking creatively. I skipped past the definition of charrette to item No. 3, which told me the plan was to “steer an unsuspecting group into ‘reaching consensus’” — hang on. Unsuspecting? And what was with the air quotes? I scanned the rest of the flyer, and there it was in bold type: Agenda 21.

Suddenly this local planning session had taken on sinister undertones. Now we were enveloped in an international conspiracy, one that would impinge on our liberties and rob us of our rights! And all before most people had even had their coffee.

Grist has written before about the hackle-raising ability of Agenda 21, a United Nations sustainable development plan adopted in 1992. Here are the dastardly goals laid out in that document: “fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems, and a safer, more prosperous future.”

Basic needs met? Living standards improved? Shud-der.

Do I wish Agenda 21 didn’t have a name that sounded like a two-bit spy movie? Of course. I have a feeling if it were called “Hey World, Let’s All Be Safer and More Prosperous,” it wouldn’t be half so alluring a target. But even then it would no doubt have its detractors, those who fear being told what to do by anyone outside the four walls they call home.

So I want that woman from my town, and others who share her views, to know what happened inside that school gym, at that fancily named charrette. For three hours, we talked in groups large and small about our hopes for the future. Young, old, parents, business owners, people who have lived all over the country and people who have never lived anywhere else. Here are a few of the scary things that were said:

• A father of three said he wished there were more to do with his family downtown so he could spend his money to support local businesses.

• A mother of two who coaches soccer advocated for improvements to the athletic facilities so people from other towns would see us more positively.

• An elderly woman hoped for a new senior center because her quilting group had grown so dramatically that some of them now had to quilt in the hallway.

• A woman suggested relocating the downtown train station so people could have better access to it, and so businesses could flourish around it.

• Several people said they’d like to see an old-fashioned movie theater in town, one that was affordable and family-friendly.

• A school principal said it would be great to find ways to build stronger connections between schoolchildren and senior citizens, the two largest groups in our population.

Weirdly, the U.N. operatives in sunglasses and trenchcoats — the ones who had come to force their horrific vision of safety and prosperity on us — didn’t talk much, just lurked in the corners and whispered to each other occasionally.

As the meeting progressed, I kept an ear out for the bolded terms the flyer had warned me to watch out for: sustainable development, smart growth, sustainable communities, green jobs, visioning, and land-use study, all of which were erroneously described as “common euphemisms for Agenda 21.” I heard exactly one of those terms used at my table, as our small group was making a list of our top goals for the town. “We should probably mention smart growth,” said a local realtor. “Though I think that’s an oxymoron.”

Turns out people don’t tend to talk a whole lot about sustainable development and visioning, sneaky U.N. plots notwithstanding. We talk instead about kids, and money, and jobs held or lost, and how we get around, and where our food comes from, and where our taxes go. We want good schools and strong health and money to spare. These conversations are happening in communities all over the country, as people work to make better places for themselves and their families. And that’s what sustainability is all about. No one used the term that day, but it was there in every breath. By definition, sustainability is life, and how we choose to live it. It’s not a dirty word.

Speaking of dirty words, that propaganda in my pocket defined charrette as a “final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline.” That’s partly true. But so is this: “A charrette is a meeting to resolve a problem or an issue … [incorporating] useful ideas and perspectives from concerned interest groups.” Of all the concerned interest groups, that woman in the black coat was the concerned-iest. I wish she had come inside with her fellow townspeople to find out what was really happening in there, and to put forth her own hopes for the place we all call home.

Coming soon to a senator’s house near you?

At least, that’s what happened this past week, when the editor of the Room for Debate forum approached and asked if I’d weigh in on Sen. Rand Paul’s bizarre outburst at a Senate hearing on energy efficiency — which David has since responded to with the generous offer of a new toilet. In fact, in true Grist style, we took the toilet theme and ran with it, offering readers a chance to win a free low-flow toilet of their own.

Meanwhile, I churned out the required 300 words, laced it with as much potty humor as I could, and turned it in. Sadly, the phrase “diarrheic diatribe” did not make the final cut, and somehow the verb “disemboweled” got taken out too. I also floated the title of Chief Pottymouth for my bio, an option the editor politely passed over. I’m not sure what’s more tragic, the high standards of the Times or my eternally low ones.

Anyhow, here’s the resulting roundtable, which includes comments from Juliet Schor of the Center for a New American Dream, Peter van Doren of the Cato Institute, Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Tamar Krishnamurti of Carnegie Mellon.

When I read the other entries, I wished I’d spent less time on my punny throne and more time inverting the issue, the way Schor did. Instead of talking about why Americans don’t want to be more energy-efficient, she suggests that notion is basically a lie spread by climate deniers and the fossil-fuel industry.

I like what she had to say, and I hope she’s right. But to be honest, I’m not so sure. When you think about the people you know — neighbors, co-workers, taxi drivers — are they clamoring for CFLs? Are they seeking out the Energy Star label and demanding low-flow lifestyles? I think the answer might still be no for plenty of people. But I hope federal standards push it more and more toward yes.

Here’s what I wrote:

Last week, Senator Rand Paul made headlines — and punchlines — by spewing invective at a Department of Energy official because, to quote part of his diatribe, “my toilets don’t work in my house.” One of several Republicans burning with rage at an energy-efficiency hearing, Senator Paul faulted the administration for being pro-choice on abortion but “anti-choice on every other consumer item.”

Putting aside the fact that Senator Paul apparently considers abortion a consumer item, it’s worth probing the source of his ire. Because he is not alone. Across the country, Americans have long balked at being encouraged to buy funny-looking light bulbs and wimpy low-flow toilets. Now that the government is moving from encouraging to mandating — in the form of new standards that will begin phasing out energy-sucking bulbs later this year — passions are rising even higher.

What’s the source of this resistance, which lands us squarely behind those energy-savvy Europeans and Australians? Is it the good old pioneer spirit that prizes independence and property rights above all? Is it the fact that Americans are used to having all the cheap energy and whooshing all the toilet-bowl water we want? Is it that we fight change tooth and nail as a matter of course, or that we have been conditioned, through decades of advertising, to spend more than we have, destroying the “energy efficiency saves money” argument?

No doubt some combination of the above, but Senator Paul’s tirade suggests there’s one more key issue at play. “I’ve been waiting 20 years to talk about how bad these toilets are,” he said, and perhaps his outdated fixtures are just the problem. When early adopters leaked the news that newfangled toilets didn’t flush right and CFLs gave off an eerie glow, the rest of us got scared. But that was 20 years ago.

These technologies have improved immensely, and their benefits are beyond question; regulation should spur even more progress. If America is what it claims to be — a land of innovation, competition and pride — we should be eager to use our buying power to make these products even better, and to render Paul’s brand of potty politics moot.

Today, our President said this:

“I know the idea [of investing in upgrades to inefficient buildings] may not be very glamorous, although I get really excited about it. Insulation is sexy stuff.”

Know what else is sexy? Obama. Glorious day!

Know what’s really depressing? Dragging out old saws about anti-human environmentalists.

Seems to me her son is creative, clever, and compassionate, not to mention keeping up on current events — all traits she might want to praise and encourage, instead of seizing on his “nihilism.” But anything to make a tired point, I suppose — and that’s exactly the problem with Applebaum’s piece.

This notion that environmentalists — and now, more specifically, climate-change activists — somehow hate humans is preposterous. It is stale. And in this essay, it is propped up by ridiculous examples.

To support her thesis, Applebaum — who notes that she supports renewable energy, a carbon tax, and a shift away from fossil fuels — calls upon three sources that are a complete sideshow relative to the current climate movement. Here’s a closer look.

1) A National Park Service ecologist who said, “We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. … Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Applebaum may well have uncovered this “radical statement” by Googling “anti-human environmentalist”; both words appear in the first paragraph of the source she links to, which dates from 1999. The original quote, in fact, dates from 1989. In the follow-up piece a decade later, the ecologist clarified his statement: “The point I was making [in the review] was that, from the standpoint of just about every other living thing on the planet, human beings are a plague. That’s still an accurate and safe assumption. Anything that reduces human populations or reduces their growth is a benefit to just about everything else on the planet. Whether that’s desirable for human beings is a completely different issue.” Emphasis added by me, because I want to make sure Applebaum sees the text she doesn’t seem to have bothered to read.

2) A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder who allegedly declared that, “Humans have grown like a cancer. We’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” Really, you’re going to rely on PETA to make your point? A group that also recommended that fish be dubbed “sea kittens,” asked Ben & Jerry’s to start making ice cream with human breast milk, and imitated KKK members at a dog show? You’re going to quote Ingrid Newkirk, a woman whose will stipulates that her feet be made into umbrella stands? Here’s a little hint about PETA: They say and do things to get attention. And look, it worked again! Twice!

3) The U.K.’s Optimum Population Trust. To bolster her argument, Applebaum turns to a “mainstream” group that “campaigns against, well, human beings.” That’s vaguely true: The Trust works toward a gradual decrease in the world’s population through efforts to reduce teen pregnancy and provide global access to birth control. But calling this group a mainstream organization that somehow represents the opinions of the climate movement is like calling kettle corn a really interesting vegetable. And the Trust’s PopOffset calculator, cited by Applebaum, is a gimmick whose garish headline-grabbiness could give PETA a run for its money. That said, there are plenty of smart people who are concerned about the damage that our current booming population is doing to the planet — see Ellen Goodman’s column from last week on this very topic, George Monbiot’s from this fall, and our very own Ask Umbra‘s from earlier this year.

Satisfied with her evidence, Applebaum wanders into a litany of examples of the wonders of humanity: We invented electricity! We invented modern transportation and communication systems! We created the Internet! She seems to consider herself humanity’s cheerleader, positioning herself squarely opposite from all those Grinchy, human-hating climate activists who are teaching her child, and society at large, to give up. As if “they” think humans are as useless as yesterday’s news. As if “they” aren’t fighting desperately to ensure the survival of the very humans she claims they despise. As if “humans” are somehow a separate concept from the activists, and her, and me, and all of us.

To be honest, I understand what sparked her piece. I have a son myself. While he’s not old enough to be making up ways to get out of doing his homework, he will be before I know it. Do I want him to dwell on the end of civilization instead of math problems? Not particularly.

But do I think the fact that even young kids know something’s amiss is cause for alarm? No. I think it means the climate message is finally filtering down. And I hope it means we’re actually gearing up to do something about all this, to avoid the drowning-humanity fate that Applebaum’s son trotted out.

Above all else, I hope this “environmentalists hate people” saw, which must be as old and moth-eaten as Teddy Roosevelt’s union suit, gets packed away for good. Since we’re pulling quotes out of context to suit our needs, I’m going to turn to one from the late Thomas Berry. I think it starts to get at the root of the real concern, which is not that humans don’t belong on the planet, but that we should understand our place. “Any progress of the human at the expense of the larger life community must ultimately lead to a diminishment of human life itself,” Berry wrote. “A degraded habitat will produce degraded humans.”

Redoing a kitchen? Hosting a national convention? Demolishing a school? Things are bound to get trashy, and that’s where Amy Bauman comes in. A former financial analyst, Bauman founded a nonprofit called greenGoat in 2001 to help Boston-area architects and contractors green their projects and create less waste. From consulting on LEED plans to finding new uses for cast-off materials, the small greenGoat team has worked with clients ranging from homeowners to the Democratic National Convention. Their aim: a zero-waste construction experience. Bauman, eager to learn more about green building and inspired by the success of Green Drinks, has also started a series called Green Thinks, in which she organizes small excursions to innovative projects in the area. We caught up with her to find out more about her one-woman quest to make Boston a cleaner, greener place.

Q. You run a green-building nonprofit called greenGoat. Why did you start it up, what’s your mission, and where did the name come from?

A. I began greenGoat to quell my personal frustration with waste levels in the construction industry. I used to get really upset seeing things being tossed into dumpsters with no apparent concern for reuse potential. Today, we try to stem the tide of waste by offering common-sense approaches to reuse and recycling plans. The name came from the goat’s proclivity for eating just about everything in sight.

Q. What are some of the projects you’re most proud of?

A. I get a secret kick out of placing very hard-to-place items. One was an old, rusted set of industrial window shutters from the Boston Children’s Museum whose red paint had faded quite beautifully. I called a theater company and suggested that they’d make great set elements, and they immediately saw that. Although the shutters were thrashed by about a century of exposure, there’s a lot of beauty in the “work” that nature does on exterior building materials. I’m proud to be able to see it.

Other challenges are beautiful items that are very labor intensive to uninstall. We give things away all the time to people willing to expend their own labor, and I’m quite proud to have placed a slate roof in a pre-demolition setting. That took a lot of calls.

Q. What’s your dream project?

A. My dream would be to work with city building inspectors to develop a protocol for re-stamping reclaimed structural members (like beams) for reuse on site. They’re doing this on the West Coast, but I’m not aware of anyone doing this on the East Coast. In addition to steel I-beams, the approach would save the great old-growth wood beams, which adds a lot of warmth to building interiors. Right now, the best we can hope for is milling those into flooring.

Q. What are your thoughts about the federal government’s efforts to push efficiency and weatherization as climate and economic solutions?

A. I tend not to wait for Congress to solve problems. I guess I’m a bit conflicted … efficiency and weatherization make sense, but they’re not going to bring dramatic climate solutions people want. We’re based in Boston, and the region has a lot of old, leaky buildings. Needless waste of energy is just as stupid as tossing out a perfectly good piece of woodwork, so I agree in principle. I do believe that the priority ofBauman digs in, prying stone from a porch for reuse.Courtesy Amy Bauman “negawatts” over generating more energy to meet our needs is right. I like to watch design ideas that are emerging … PassivHaus is interesting, and I’m endlessly fascinated by technological solutions emerging in the field.

Q. OK, so in your spare time you founded a series called “Green Thinks,” an alternative to Green Drinks. How did that come about?

A. It was a completely selfish move to educate myself about the mechanical side of green building. It’s something that greenGoat hasn’t tackled yet, and I field a lot of questions about what works and what doesn’t. I thought it would be fun to take a group out into the world, to reassemble design teams at the project sites to talk about certain technologies … what worked, what didn’t, and surprises along the way. It’s a lot of fun … people from the industry and many interested interlopers show up to have a beer and ask questions. I think it’s important to have a “hype -ree” zone where no one is selling anything … just reviewing what the technology offered the site.

Q. What’s the most interesting “field trip” you’ve run through Green Thinks? What’s on the horizon?

A. The most interesting one for me was the one where I knew the least: EnerNOC and their smart grid technology. In a nutshell, they’ve developed a way to reach into subscribers’ buildings and selectively turn off lights (in a planned way) in the case that grid-wide usage begins to max out. Another really cool trip was to Nuvera, a hydrogen fuel cell company. Massachusetts is edging closer and closer to its next “tech boom.”

This month, our Green Thinks holiday party goes back in time to “luddite green”: Old Schwamb Mill in Arlington, a hydro-powered factory from the early 1800s. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s a great reminder that there are many great ideas that got their start when resources were scarce. It’s Yankee frugality at its best. We’re also trying to get on Logan Airport’s calendar to take a look at their mini-wind installation — one of the technologies I’m watching.

Q. If you could wave your magic wand and make one thing happen in the world of green building, what would it be?

A worker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention takes masonite to a better place, with guidance from greenGoat.Courtesy Amy BaumanA. I’d make every city building inspector take eight paid hours of LEED training. It would be a great investment. Can I keep going? I’d make transfer stations and waste facilities really report how much they were recycling and how much was being shipped to another state. I’d invest in “mining” technology for finding metals in landfills and think about how to recapture lost assets. I’m not lacking in big dreams.

Q. What’s your advice for people who want to green their homes and/or communities?

A. If there is an environmental issue that really bugs you, start there. For me, it was waste. I decided (among other things) to turn off my waste dispose-all and start composting. Some of the home products reviewed right here in Ask Umbra really give me great ideas. In my home, it’s a mix of my own behavior and the stuff I buy every day.

As for community … plant trees and preserve open space. My town — Somerville, Mass. — is very urban, and we need all the trees we can get. The other problem my particular city has is that it’s nearly all paved. Probably the reason we don’t have trees! I’m trying to suggest test patches of pervious pavement, but … the city keeps waving me off. I keep coming back, though.

Q. Anything else you want people to know about your work?

A. greenGoat wants to work with manufacturers of building materials (and architects) on the concept of designing for deconstruction. For example, it’s very hard to reclaim carpet that has been glued in place. Welding is permanent; bolts are impermanent (and foster reuse). There are many methods of assembly that preclude reuse, and we’re of course very interesting in encouraging building owners and designers to think through the use of space to make it easy for spaces to be reconfigured in the future. Because of our constant exposure to taking materials out of spaces, we see installation methods that are either faulty or too permanent.

We are innovating all the time and growing into voids we see in the industry. For example, we now save landscaping that would be lost to demolition. It took a while to notice it, but … wow. It takes a lot of resources to bring a plant to maturity, and people don’t realize how much is lost. We like to find new ways to reintroduce patient conservation of assets into fast-paced projects. I live for that moment when I can show a client’s accountant the worth of what they were going to throw away … in dollars and in embodied energy. All we ask is the time to plan an orderly egress. The more time we’re given, the more we rescue.

In this corner, we have PETA, a shameless animal-rights organization that uses boobies to make its point at least — what, once or twice a minute? To wit: this latest, uh, holiday-themed ad featuring Polish Playboy model Joanna Krupa. In the other corner, we have FOX News and angry Christians:

For a higher purpose?PETA.org

“It’s totally inappropriate,” said Deal Hudson, publisher of InsideCatholic.com, an online magazine. “It’s another instance of disrespect toward Christianity and another example of the kind of abuse that would never occur with any other major religion, because the outcry would be so immediate and so loud that the people behind it would immediately retreat.”

Immature jokes about the name “InsideCatholic” aside, what do you think? Is this a brilliant marketing ploy, an offense to all that is good and holy, or just a waste of your time? Vote below.

Update: The results are in:

The latest PETA ad makes me want to …

• 31.3 percent — Adopt a puppy, not buy one
• 30.2 percent — Make some popcorn and watch PETA and FOX tear each other apart
• 29.4 percent — Sorry, what was the question? I have boobs in my ears
• 7 percent — Crusade for the rights of Christians everywhere
• 2.1 percent — Go to confession

Winner of Project Laundry List’s 2009 “Art on the Line” competition. Daisey BinghamAlexander Lee founded Project Laundry List as a Middlebury College undergrad in 1995, after hearing Dr. Helen Caldicott say we could shut down the nuclear industry if we all did things like hang out our clothes. He’s been true to the cause ever since, pushing for clotheslines across the land — even at the White House. Grist caught up with him to find out how hanging out can make for better neighborhoods, what clotheslines have to do with climate change, and why laundry stigmas are as persistent as wine stains.

Q. You created and run Project Laundry List — why, and what are its goals?

A. Growing up, my mother had always referred to herself as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (the prickly laundress in Beatrix Potter’s series) and the clothesline was much less a pennant of the eco-chic, as it is becoming today through our work, than a flag of New England Yankee frugality. Helen’s idea resonated with me and we started a subgroup of the environmental club. We asked people to put themselves on the line and come hang out with us, and the puns haven’t stopped.

Our mission has evolved to focus on “making air-drying and cold-water washing laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy.” This really only became my day job in 2007, after years as a teacher, law student, public utilities commission staffer, and political campaigner. I get paid roughly minimum wage, mostly raised through selling clotheslines and drying racks. I work a bazillion hours. We have never really written grants. There is no time for that nonsense when the house is burning down. This is a work of love and passion, motivated by an abiding sense that we are in planetary crisis. Not much sense in working for Lehman Brothers and laying up treasure, like many of my classmates did, when ain’t none of it gunna matter if we don’t get ahold of the climate monster. I am just not the type to drink martinis and listen to Mozart as the Titanic is sinking.

Raise your hand if you believe in the right to dry!Couresty Project Laundry ListI am inspired by people like Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, to live and work as I do, but I fall way short. Furthermore, I am too irreverent and incorrigible to be as good a Catholic as she. An editor for my forthcoming book (More Time to Hang) likened me, somewhat admiringly, to a monk. I grunted and then chuckled, remembering Dorothy’s rebuke to somebody calling her a saint: “I won’t be dismissed so easily.” In July 2008, ABC World News, in their story on the right to dry, referred to me as “a 33 year-old bachelor lawyer from Concord, NH.” That conjures up another image, entirely. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Q. The clothesline issue seems to have gotten a lot of press in the last year or two — to what do you attribute that? Does it surprise you?

A. No surprise. People love to talk about laundry and everybody, everybody is an expert. Laundry is a universal human experience that is tactile, olfactory, and sentimental. Nearly everybody of a certain age has their own story of twirling among the bedsheets pinned on a clothesline with a grandmother or parent. Consumers like the smell so much that Yankee Candle has four scents meant to remind us of clothes drying on the line. (Forget that they mostly smell like dryer sheets.)

We have received mention in the WSJ twice, ABC World News and the CBS Sunday Morning Show, and NPR and The New York Times (seven times!). We have a meme that works, but the clothesline is just a “gateway drug” to better environmental living. It is a jumping off point to talk about the failure of the fourth layer of government (“community” associations); to talk about clothing care issues more generally, like we are doing with the Permacouture Institute through our New Again Coalition; to talk about why taxpayers foot the bill to wash prison uniforms in hot water; and to think about so much else.

Q. I’m always taken aback when I hear about places that don’t allow clotheslines, and then I assume they’re gated communities in sprawling places. Is that generally true? And are the bans are a reflection of some sort of stigma?

Lee (left) with Canadian folk singer and children’s TV personality Fred Penner, sporting a clothesline tie. Courtesy Project Laundry ListA. Truth is, clotheslines are banned or severely restricted by landlords and mobile home parks, too. It is not just the super-wealthy who are afraid of some mythic property value decrease if a neighbor shows some thong on the line.

The Italians — only 3 to 4 percent of them own a dryer — think we are crazy. They are a fashion-conscious, industrialized nation. We could take a page from their book. By contrast, about 80 percent of American households own a dryer, but good news: for the first time last year, we did see a drastic decrease in the number of Americans who see the dryer as essential.

There are five major objections to the clothesline that I confront all of the time: Prudery, snobbery, liability/safety, convenience, and feminism. I could write a book (I am writing a book) full of anecdotes that paint a picture of an America looking for any reason not to use a clothesline. The excuses range from the absurd to the comical. In both Connecticut and New Hampshire, shills for the local chapters of the Community Association Institute testified against Right to Dry legislation, claiming that the clothesline is a liability. Somebody might walk into one in the common area of a condominium and sue the association, they claimed. Never mind that, according to the National Fire Prevention Association, dryers cause 15,000 fires every year, resulting in 10-15 deaths and $200 million in property damage.

Michelle Obama put in that garden at the White House and I said, on Facebook, “Maybe a clothesline will be next.” Within minutes someone asked me if I was being racist or snarky. He was surprised to learn we had been pushing for a White House clothesline since 2007 on www.right2dry.org. That is what we are up against here. Stigma.

In response to the Times debate I wrote a piece for, a woman proclaimed, “You’ll pry my clothes dryer out of my cold dead hands.” Project Laundry List is not telling her she cannot have a dryer. Feminism is about choices. We are telling her that if she has a dryer, the oceans may rise and her front porch will get wet. Tough choices for some.

We are not anti-dryer; we are pro-clothesline. If you cannot get up out of your wheelchair or you have debilitating allergies for part of the year, the dryer makes sense and is a marvelous invention, but the real problem is not the millions of Americans disallowed from hanging clothes, it is the hundreds of millions of Americans who refuse to get up, go outside for some fresh air and sunshine, talk over the fence with their neighbors, and mindfully take time to do an essential human task. By my estimate five billion plus people in the world manage fine without a dryer. It may not be “easy living,” but it beats having the ocean lapping at your door.

Q. What promise do better laundry habits hold for individuals? What about for climate?

A. Life is about choices. We should sweat the small stuff, because small is beautiful; however, we can ill afford not to sweat the big stuff. A report that just came out concluded that if Americans would hang their laundry out to dry, along with 16 other small steps, they could slash U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 7.4 per cent by 2019. This is a studiously conservative study. We can do more, faster. I know we can, in my unscientific gut.

As far as laundry itself, we do a terrible job of measuring its true national energy impact. It is okay to look at the average household energy used by a fridge, but when you have over 2 million households doing fifteen loads or more per week and others skewing the average by doing laundry down the hall or at a Laundromat, the 5.9 percent figure, which is the average American residential electric use for the tumble dryer, tells you almost nothing. There are 2 million people in jail in this country and millions spent last night in a hotel, hospital, or nursing home. We do not submeter commercial or industrial laundry facilities to see how much they are using. All that laundry done for restaurants, universities, fish piers, etc., goes unaccounted for.

Q. You spent the summer on a “Clotheslines Across America” tour — what are the most memorable things you saw and heard?

World’s largest — and solar-powered to boot!Courtesy Alex LeeA. The tour started on my 35th birthday in New York City. The purpose was to have fun and meet some of our supporters. I wanted to see this country, see the holy ground that people like my uncle, a Marine lieutenant in Korea, died to protect. I met somebody at the giant clothespin sculpture in Philadelphia who had supported us for over a decade!

Another primary purpose was to provide material for a movie that is being made called Drying for Freedom — watch the trailer. The interviews that we did in Kentucky, visiting the World’s Largest Laundromat (solar hot water!) just outside Chicago, standing beneath the Arch in St. Louis on the Saturday morning of Parkapalooza, and watching a baseball game with Gov Pat Quinn of Illinois (we want a major league team to do a “Line Dry” event next year) were a couple of the highlights. I had the most fun doing a photo shoot with a pin-up girl in Philly so that we can make a poster that asks, “Why Don’t More Men Hang Out the Laundry?!” She was watching as I did the dirty work… and don’t worry, it was tasteful! Maybe every Hollywood couple can do a similar photo shoot with Celeste Giuliano (the awesome photographer) and we can produce a whole calendar on this theme.

Q. What will it take to get every U.S. municipality to give its citizens the “right to dry”?

A. What will it take to get every utility company in the country to give away clotheslines to its customers, like Toronto Hydro and BC Hydro have done in Canada? Couldn’t they give away racks, too? What will it take to get these places you are asking about to allow xeriscaping, compost piles, window AC units and screen windows (so people don’t get central air), and gardens? Maybe some really good designer drugs from Aldous Huxley. Maybe the Community Association Institute making this an organizational priority.

Q. What eco-worry keeps you up at night?

A. Environmentalists have this fascination with carbon dioxide. It is time for them to start paying attention to methane, before the proverbial cow pie hits the electric fan. To understand why methane is 72 times worse than carbon dioxide over a twenty year period, read Wikipedia. Particularly, I am worried that New England governors are about to encourage Hydro-Quebec to build more dams when nobody can show me any peer-reviewed evidence that rotting vegetation in temperate hydroelectric reservoirs are not a major producer of greenhouse gases. I have been working with the Cree since the early 1990s on this and have paddled the Rupert River — just dammed this year — five times.

Q. Anything else you want people to know about your work?

A. Without throwing about academic terms like Jevons Paradox and the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate, I just want to say that heroes of mine, like Amory Lovins, who have asked us to invest with religious fervor in the concept of energy efficiency, have forgotten that we need to focus on what happens with all that leftover cash saved through efficiency. If the individual takes that cash and flies to a conference in Copenhagen or buys one of these new drying cabinets that Maytag thinks we need to have next to our dryer, then we have not gained a thing. In fact, it is a setback.

Read More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan and Elizabeth Shove’s book Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience (Berg 2003). Stop putting your faith in sweeping political reforms, like the “clean” nuclear and America is the Saudi Arabia of clean coal mumbo jumbo coming out of our Congress, and start taking some personal responsibility. Congressman Brian Baird is on the right track with his behavior change research bill. New technology is important, but not the silver bullet.

The biggest crisis facing humanity is not campaign finance reform, climate change, nuclear waste and proliferation, or endocrine disruption and our poisoned food, air, or water, but rather how we do our laundry. What if every one of the five billion people without access to a dryer now suddenly had not only a dryer, but a refrigerator, washing machine, and hot water heater in their mud hut? And what’s up with all the wooden clothespins we buy now being “Made in China”? I was made in America and think conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, that you should put on your sweater and turn down the thermostat. It is almost winter, for Pete’s sake.

Seventh Generation

But that does a disservice to the intention behind this effort, which is to rally support for reform of the nation’s chemical policies. You don’t have to have babies — or even wuv them! — to want the feds to better regulate the toxics that find their way into our homes and bodies.

The facts are out there, and they are not cuddly-wuddly:

• Since 1976, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has required safety testing on only 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals on the market.
• According to the Environmental Working Group, a new chemical is synthesized every 2.6 seconds and the EPA approves two a day without adequate evaluation, particularly of the risks of low-dose, long-term exposure.
• Studies conducted by EWG have detected up to 287 industrial chemicals in umbilical cord blood that nourishes unborn children.

Scary stuff, and you can read much more about it, as well as the push for reform, on the Environmental Working Group site.

Erin Brockovich lends her star power to the launch of the Million Baby Crawl.So the Crawl has commenced. A creative spin on the traditional online petition, it finds legendary green-products manufacturer Seventh Generation partnering with consumer-rights advocate Erin Brockovich, eco-pediatrician Alan Greene, and a coalition called Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Visitors can “create a crawler” (again, you don’t have to have a baby, or ever have had a baby, or ever have thought about having a baby, to participate) or “find a crawler” by zip code or name. The goal, say organizers, is to deliver (ha! deliver!) the signatures to Congress in January — so far they’re at 12,160 and counting.

The International Day of Climate Action spearheaded by 350.org has already kicked off, and will involve more than 4,800 events in 171 countries. Find one near you — and then tell Grist about your big time!

Sometimes it can be quite expedient
To act all quiet and obedient.
But now’s the time, across the land:
Get off your butt and take a stand!

On October 24, climate voices ring — from Mongolia to Maine.350.org

Yeah.

But it’s fun to add some glitz to green, and I tip my newsgirl cap to the EMA for the work it’s done on that front through all its efforts, including these awards. Apparently for twenty years! Who knew.

In search of a little context, I thought I’d see who else is celebrating a “platinum” anniversary this year — since Grist has made it to ten years (tin/aluminum!), why not look to our elders for wisdom. Turns out those commemorating their twentieth include such international heavyweights as the Goldman Prize and the U.N. Environment Program’s information office, known fondly as GRID-Arendal. They also include slightly lesser, but no less fascinating, eco-lights: the National Wetlands Awards, New York City environmental-justice and health organization WE-Act, NRDC’s Southern California office, Canadian grocery company Loblaw’s PC Green product line, and … Turtle Independence Day!

Which can mean only one thing — it’s time to raise a glass, and it’s time to vote:

Update: The results are in:

Which 20th anniversary party would you attend?

• 30 percent — Loblaw: But only if I can write about it on Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog.
• 30 percent — Turtle Independence Day: Shell yeah!
• 20 percent — The EMAs: I wanna scooch on over closer to Jason Mraz.
• 20 percent — Goldman Prize: Because I need an injection of inspiration.
• 0 percent — GRID-Arendal: Climate wonks make me hot.
• 0 percent — National Wetlands Awards: Swamp stomp!
• 0 percent — WE-Act: Let’s drink to everyone’s good health.
• 0 percent — NRDC’s SoCal office: Hangin’ with Cam-Cam and Leo at the Beverly Wilshire? Sign me up.