Shannon Koenig and I met this morning to talk about conservation. We met through Sustainable Arlington, a grassroots effort to promote planet-friendly consciousness and practices in our town.

The meeting was an outgrowth of previous discussions, but today's topic was mine. I'm very drawn to gadgetry and other technology, but there is absolutely no question that the No. 1 priority for anyone interested in sustainability should be conservation. Just take less. Use less. Spend less. It offers a bigger payoff than solar or wind or geothermal. We will need all those, but before we spend a penny on any of them, we should wring every bit of waste and profligacy out of our current practices.

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.

On that trip, I was struck by one commonality of three of our stops: Perhaps the most attractive, striking place architecturally was Maria Chao's house [below]. There are green features, such as her Munchkin boiler, but its design is a very strong green element: lots of south-facing glass, solar mass, etc. Maria is an architect, and previously lived in Virginia, working with William McDonough.

I mention a few action items in my post about GreenFest. But also that day, I got on the mailing list of The Green Decade Coalition/Newton, an apparently very active group. Here are some events from my first mailing from them...

Tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 4, a tour of four solar homes and a community solar project. Gather in Newton at 9:30; tour is 10-2. $18 at the door. More information here.

Also tomorrow but in Brookline: A "Global Warming Cafe" starts with a light lunch at noon, followed by three hours of presentations:
• Plenary Speaker: Brookline resident Mindy Lubber, President, Ceres, "Advancing Sustainable Prosperity"
• Low Carbon Living Workshop: Easy, initial steps to lower your household CO2 output by 10% or more. Introducing "The Low Carbon Diet, a 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds.

I don't know anyone who doesn't have some reservation with the term "green" to describe the movement toward a more environmentally sound future. (Brian Butler, owner of Boston Green Building and a recent respondent to my "Green People" series (and how inadequate is that as a name for a series!) is the most recent example I've encountered.)

But in the past couple of days, I've read two criticisms of "sustainable," which is clunky, but at least it's more specific and doesn't suffer for trendiness. (Actually, it's one criticism, expressed by two sources.)

Nature showed a bit of ingratitude this weekend, washing out the two planned days of Greenfest and dampening the make-up day Sunday. Though the tables were protected top and sides by tenting, there were still plenty of opportunities to get wet, and I watched an informative presentation by architect Bill Boehm with my shoes in puddles of rainwater.

Still, I learned a few things...

* In 2009, New Generation Energy will offer Renewable Energy Investment Notes. People and/or groups that buy them will be guaranteed term and interest rate. The proceeds will fund loans to support renewable energy projects, at rates as low as 3 percent, for nonprofits, municipalities, and community-based for-profit organizations. New Generation, a nonprofit started two years ago, intends to sell notes worth $50 million altogether, in denominations as low as $1,000.

I don't think these will continue in parallel, mostly because we (try to) do more on the positive side. But still, both with the foreshadowing from yesterday's post, and the fact that we have a very visible sign of unreconstructed vehicle thinking, it seems only fair to come right back with it.

I've been thinking for a while about making a "sticky" post that would talk about all the things we do in our household with a green purpose, and all the things we need to change.

But today, I decided to start a series of shorter posts to cover the same ground, instead, and am beginning with the obvious, our "status symbol": 

1. We have a Prius.

There's been plenty of anecdotal indications that Americans are driving less, but now the US DOT has provided some data.

Americans drove 20 billion miles less in April than in April of last year.

Three months ago, at a Northeast Sustainable Energy Association public forum in Boston, green PR guru Solitaire Townsend said the movement to overcome climate change needs to tell its equivalent of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, rather than what it’s has been doing, which she called, “I Have a Nightmare.”

Townsend has a good point. Environmentalists have been militating for decades for drastic changes from businesses and consumers, and for most of that time, all it really gained us was a reputation as do-gooder killjoys. Frickin’ treehuggers.

I knew a guy once who smoked cigars in self-satisfaction for years, but felt he had to give it up when stogies became became the latest fad — it was anathema to him to be seen as going along with a fad. I thought of that again yesterday, when a pal suggested he might not want a Prius because it has become a Yuppie status symbol.

But as I've noted before, the Prius works, strictly at the level of utility, even if it also has become a Yuppie symbol. I know I'm burning less fossil fuel by getting 45 mph, even if some people might think I'm a status seeker.