I'm sitting in a basement in Santa Monica putting the final touches on our film about a post oil economy, which by the way, looks like it's going to be pretty good, pretty fresh, and very non-partisan. Anyway, I was doing some research on the two big pro-drilling propaganda sites about ANWR (anwr.com & anwr.org) - which are the same people btw - and I noticed they were using Google adwords to earn some revenue. The funny thing is that, since Google adwords are contextual and automatic, all the ads are adamantly anti-drilling. Check it out!

The New York obsession with packaging takes off again: This morning I was asked if I would like a bag with my cup of coffee. Huh? At least they asked!

One of the lessons of the book Natural Capitalism is that current economic calculations fail to account for the value of leaving intact ecosystems in place - if a felled forest is worth some amount of dollars, what's the opportunity cost in terms of damage to fisheries, carbon storage capacity, tourism, etc... these literal dollar costs, if calculated and added up, are often far higher than the short term gain had by the company which does the logging.

Anyway, once looked at as offbeat, such principals are gaining more acceptance (perhaps because they're more accurate!). No greater authority than the Federal Reserve Bank has just published a report sugesting the value of a living tree, as opposed to a cut one. That's pretty impressive given the current administration.

Buy the book, it's good.

In terms of pure efficiency, the outdoor clothesline is probably the most effective solar-powered innovation of all time, especially in hot, dry climates.

There's an old joke about the marketing saavy of the man who can sell freezers to eskimos. In our discussion today, Mathis Wackernagel added the corrolary - how about selling clothes dryers to Arizonans? Think about that one.