How many Presidents of the United States does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one.

It's no joke. Millions of Americans have already changed their light bulbs to save energy and fight global warming. New lighting standards announced Monday will help all our homes and businesses make the switch, and as a result, save billions of dollars in utility bills and create thousands of new jobs.

The new lighting standards will save enough energy annually to power all U.S. homes for almost a year, while saving consumers $1 billion to $4 billion a year in utility bills. The long-delayed standards come just a few months after the president directed Energy Secretary Steven Chu to speed up the process of setting efficiency standards for a variety of home and commercial appliances, from refrigerators to soft-drink vending machines.

Remember the John Birch Society? The virulent right-wing McCarthyist outfit born in Indianapolis in 1958? I hadn't heard of it for years, would have guessed it had passed quietly back into the fourteenth century, but low and behold it's still alive, kicking, screaming, and denying the fact of global warming and climate change.

The other day I happened to tune in to the Diane Rehm show on NPR to hear John Holdren, the president's science advisor, talk about the new climate change report that made stark headlines last week, reporting that warming is here, is having serious negative effects already, and is largely caused by human activity.

There is actually no original news in the report; rather it is the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey yet released. It was put together by representatives from some 30 government agencies who reviewed dozens, probably hundreds, of research papers from all over the world. As always, John's commentary was clear, direct, and sober. So far, so good.

Biking in to work the other day I heard an underwriting pitch from IBM, touting its new campaign, or slogan, or website, call it what you will, for "A Smarter Planet." Oh boy. Now we're going to teach the planet new tricks, show it where evolution has fallen short.

Don’t you guys get it? It's not the planet that lacks smarts, it's the human race. We should learn from natural systems, pattern human society on systems that work, are sustainable and don't foul their own nests. (Semirelevant aside: Paul Hawken just gave a lovely commencement speech to a group of graduates in Portland. Among many interesting things he said was, Do you realize that humans are the only species on the planet that do not have full employment? Worth pondering. The whole speech is quite wonderful and uplifting in fact.)