Armchair inventors -- I confess to being one myself -- have looked to the design and manufacturing community on Quirky to help them bring their inventions to market.

The folks at Quirky have also demonstrated their commitment to the environment by introducing of Petal Drops, a flower-shaped funnel made of 100% recycled HDPE that collects rainwater in a standard reusable bottle. I confess to never having actually used a Petal Drop, but I love their rapid-fire approach to design: Quick and Quirky is a program that asks participants to develop an entire product within 24 hours.

The Age of Stupid, a fictionalized documentary by director Franny Armstrong, is a rueful look back at the present day from the perspective of the year 2055, when human civilization is all but destroyed by our inaction on global warming and climate change.

If you like your apocalypse served raw, The Age of Stupid may be the film for you. Despite its flaws, it delivers an important message about the perils of climate change in unambiguous terms. Whether the film will inspire anyone to make meaningful changes remains to be seen -- The Age of Stupid is expected to open to wide U.S. release in 2010.

Have you seen it? What's your opinion of the film?

Great news for those of us who live on Earth (Dick Cheney, you can skip this part). The EPA just announced that it would set limits for emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and other greenhouse gases, rather than wait for Congress to pull its head out.

The move coincides with the start of the international climate change summit now taking place in Copenhagen, and has been interpreted as a signal that the U.S. is serious about addressing global warming, despite years of corporate and Congressional foot-dragging.

More and more, it seems that we cannot count on our elected leaders to find the political courage to take decisive action on this critical issue. (Even the EPA's position comes two years after a Supreme Court decision forced them to regulate CO2). As is often the case, real leadership must come from we, the people. Here's what you can do about climate change.

Yesterday, a friend sent me a message asking what I was doing for "Xmax." We both enjoyed the typo, since it seems to sum up our feelings about the crazed nature of the holiday season. For folks trying to live a happy, simple life, this time of year is particularly trying.

But here's a way to live green -- and save green: a short list of great sustainable gift ideas. All of them can be ordered online (read: no driving to a crowded mall) and most are priced under $50. (And that's not a typo.)

Even before the first "crying Indian" anti-litter advertisement aired in 1970, the folks at Keep America Beautiful have been striving to end the lazy, disgusting habit of littering.

And it appears their efforts have paid off handsomely. Founded in 1953 -- way before "green living" was cool -- KAB is one of the most influential groups that have helped to reduce littering by over 60 percent since 1968.

Recent research sponsored by KAB finds that litter costs America over $11 billion each year. About 38 percent of litter is one item: cigarette butts. But there's more good news: people under the age of 30 litter much less than their older counterparts, so the future is looking greener.

Some gifts touch the heart more than the wallet. The gift of a charitable donation is a great way to show that you care about the gift recipient and about the rest of the world, too.

This holiday season, why not give a gift donation to an environmental group? Many gift memberships come with nice perks like tote bags, calendars, magazine subscriptions and toys, as well as attractive gift cards. And some highly respected environmental groups have gift memberships that start at just $35.

Perhaps best of all, you can do all that shopping from the comfort of your own home -- no traffic, no mall, no crowds. Just visit the group's website and wrap up all your shopping in a matter of minutes.

Here's a smart, funny look at a country -- the good old U. S. of A -- that's searching for its agricultural roots. This being the holiday season, it's a good time to remember those parts of our heritage that made us what we are today, and to reflect on what we've become in recent years.

For everyone who still docks their SUV at the McDonald's drive-thru, it seems there's someone else who's starting an organic garden at an inner city school. For everyone who makes big money investing in big agribusiness, there's a farmer who no longer sprays chemicals on his crops.

And for that, we can all be thankful.

You grow your own tomatoes, harvest your own herbs, and cultivate a few fruit trees (or you wish you did). Why then would you buy meat from a butcher?

More and more people are taking the locavore approach to getting their own meat, including hunting local deer for venison. Though it may seem extreme to some folks, hunting and dressing your own deer, boar, turkey or other game has been a way of life for, oh, thousands of years. And you can't get much more free-range than a wild animal.

Where I live (in the country north of New York City), the air these days is filled with the sound of deer rifles. The animals are pests, wiping out forests and gardens alike, so taking out Bambi's mom seems like green living at its finest. In fact, I feel a bit foolish for serving a store-bought turkey this Thursday, since my backyard is home to a family of turkeys.

Here's wishing you and your family a happy, healthy and local Thanksgiving.

LED Christmas lights use just 10 percent of the energy of incandescents, last for some 50,000 hours, and are cooler and safer than older incandescent lights. So why are you hanging onto those old Christmas lights?

Perhaps the best news of all is this: HolidayLEDs.com will take your old lights, recycle them, and give you a coupon for 15 percent off any LED lights they sell. So now you can save money on saving money.

That should make your Yuletide bright.

A recent article in the New Yorker reviews Superfreakonomics, the latest book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of the best-selling Freakonomics.

Reviewer Elizabeth Kolbert makes the Steves sound like glib amateurs who are simply out of their depth. When they assert the solution to global warming lies at the end of an eighteen-mile-long hose that would shoot sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby mimicking the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption, Kolbert coolly rips them a new one: "Though climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are."

And with a title like SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, it's hard to believe that the two authors are more interested in serious debate than in provocative soapboxing.

Massive geoengineering projects like the ones they propose have a pathetic track record, and Kolbert delivers a knockout punch to the two econo-hacks: "To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction."

Brava, Kolbert!