Our stuff gets packed into a big shipping container today for the 3,000-mile trip to Germany.

We're picking up and moving to a rented apartment on the west side of Berlin, where I hope to document the progress of that town toward environmental sustainability.

Germany is by no means stagnant in the face of climate change, There are almost daily headlines about new federal or local government action, making it easier for industry and community to do the right thing - or making it harder for them to pollute.

The German Environmental Ministry is currently holding hearings on the draft of a nation-wide Environmental Code. Germany has been a longtime practitioner of national resource-conservation through recycling. Americans could reduce their energy consumption by up to 47 percent simply by practicing conservation. To which the former oil executive-turned-US vice president said, "Hmph." 

"The aim here is efficiency, not austerity," Dick Cheney famously said, upon convening his own secret pro-consumption expert energy team in 2001. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Now that we have seen how the administration's "sound" and "comprehensive" energy policy has played out, I'm heading out for "das Land" to see how the Euros are doing it.