Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, generally has the mien of the diplomat that he is — dark-suited, well-spoken, calm, deliberate, serious. But on Friday he managed to poke fun at himself, or more specifically, his ears. In the end, he made a Star Trek allusion and likened himself to Dr. Spock.

At a World Bank seminar on actions to combat climate change, de Boer noted a slightly skewed introduction by saying, “Even though you pointed out that I was sitting in a different seat, most people know me by my ears anyway.” And in fact, de Boer’s ears are prominent features.

De Boer took note after another panelist, Valli Moosa of the World Conservation Union, refered to the “Star Trek” TV show to make the point that hybrid cars are becoming increasingly mainstream, saying this was “not a ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ thing.”

“You talked about ‘Star Trek’ earlier,” de Boer said, looking at Moosa. “If you want to make the money go where money has never gone before …” The packed auditorium broke up in laughter, many clearly recognizing de Boer’s riff on the signature introduction to the decades-old sci-fi series. “The question is, who looks most like Dr. Spock?” De Boer was making a point about improving the investment climate in developing countries, but seemed to relish the laugh he got at his own expense.

Moderator Ralph Begleiter broke in: “A lot of people in this audience have never seen that show.”

“Judging by the laughter, some of them have,” was de Boer’s comeback.

Minutes later, he grabbed his briefcase and left the forum, on his way to another flight to another city. Even diplomats know: it’s best to leave your audience laughing.

Solar houses aren’t what they used to be — and that is a cause for celebration. Specifically, on Washington’s National Mall, the 20 competing teams in this year’s Solar Decathlon spent the last few weeks celebrating the 20 small homes they designed to run only on the sun’s power. That means heating, cooling, cooking and cleaning in 800 square feet and using the solar energy collected by the house to run a small electric vehicle for essential transportation.

Grouped in a small “village” with the Capitol dome and the Washington Monument as backdrops, the solar homes are a far cry from those early solar-powered dwellings that looked like a normal suburban house, except for massive solar cells bolted to the roof. These houses are more subtle and stylish, by design.

With teams from Germany, Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada and the United States, the contest is meant to show how to construct user-friendly homes that people might actually live in. In addition to being rated on architecture, engineering and energy balance, the homes are judged on market viability — whether they could be built easily and accommodate lots of different kinds of homeowners — and communications, that is, how well they teams express themselves in Web sites required by the competition.

So the house built by the University of Texas at Austin team has a “skin” that responds to win through shutters that can change to cope with the need for light, heat, fresh air and privacy. And those well-camouflaged solar collectors on the roof heat water for the home, with excess heat warming a bright orange hot tub on the home’s outside deck.

“The innovation is using a thing of joy like a hot tub as a technical amenity — it takes heat out of the system so you don’t pay for heating the tub,” said University of Texas student Jack Wingerath in a statement before the October final competition began.

The University of Maryland has an inviting hammock on its front deck, right by a wall planted with greenery — not in planters but actually in the external wall. The University of Madrid team’s entry looks like it might take off and fly at any moment. The entry from the University of Cincinnati features multi-colored exterior walls and tall grasses along the entrance ramp.

The Technische Universitat Darmstadt took first prize, with the University of Maryland taking second and Santa Clara University in California third. There is no cash award, but winners get “a trophy, the honor of winning and the jobs they’ll likely get out of it,” according to Kevin Brosnahan of the U.S. Department of Energy, which sponsored the competition along with corporations including BP, Sprint and Honeywell.

More information is available online at http://www.solardecathlon.org.

Posted by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

Sometimes you cant make it up any weirder than it actually is. That definitely was the case on June 14, when a pair of environmental pranksters managed to promote themselves as keynote speakers at the Gas and Oil Exposition aka GO-EXPO 2007 in Calgary.

Masquerading as officials from ExxonMobil and the U.S. National Petroleum Council, the two appeared before an oil industry audience and the buzz was that they would deliver long-awaited conclusions of a study commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

They actually offered something a bit more revolutionary: a new fuel called Vivoleum, to be used in the event of a global climate calamity and made by transforming the billions of people who die into oil.

“We need something like whales, but infinitely more abundant,” said the faux NPC rep Shepard Wolff in reality, Andy Bichlbaum of the satirical duo the Yes Men. He then described the technology that would render human flesh into Vivoleum, a new Exxon product, with 3-D animations and a PowerPoint presentation.

“Vivoleum works in perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel production,” noted the ersatz Exxon rep “Florian Osenberg” (Yes Man Mike Bonanno). “With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left.”

The oil industry crowd listened attentively through the presentation and only started looking quizzical after the speakers began distributing memorial Vivoleum candles, putatively made from the remains of an Exxon janitor who perished after cleaning up a toxic spill. The candles were really made of paraffin, beeswax and bits of human hair, so they actually stank, as you might expect if you were burning a human being, Bichlbaum said. The candles were mounted in boboches little circles of printed paper to keep the melting wax off peoples hands printed with the message: 80 percent Vivoleum and commemorating an actor named Reggie Watts, who played the janitor in a tribute video shown at the event.

At this point, people have gone through disgust to realizing that theyve probably been had, which is just fine, Bichlbaum said later by telephone. After that, the conference organizer charged up to the stage, made them stop the show and hustled Bonanno off. Bichlbaum, still in character, told reporters who clustered around him, Well, weve got to turn humanity into fuel or do something with them, itd be cruel not to do something with all that resource going to waste.

Calgary police were summoned but no arrests were made, and the Yes Men left without further incident.

The two have been orchestrating these kinds of events since 1999, when a satirical Web site they made that was pegged to the Seattle meetings of the World Trade Organization was mistaken for an official WTO site and the Yes Men got accidental invitations to speak to various gatherings. Bichlbaum acknowledged that the GO-EXPO presentation was near the pinnacle of prankdom.

I would say this is a really good one because its the kind of industry thats most evidently destroying the planet and destroying our chances for survival, he said. And these people that we were speaking to are the most directly involved in destruction of any audience weve spoken to.

The Yes Men see themselves as political activists, but Bichlbaum accepted the title of environmentalist. I think you have to be We all depend on the environment so much right now. Were not talking about just destruction of nature, were talking about destruction of humanity with climate change and the way these things are going. Its not a matter of environmentalism, its a matter of wanting to survive.

Neither ExxonMobil nor the National Petroleum Council would comment. The conference organizers issued a statement saying they had verified that their keynote speakers were not who they pretended to be.