Hey Mr. Green,

This holiday season, I want to give presents that are good for the environment. What’s your top recommendation? —Bill in Dearborn, Michigan

I used to recommend Hey Mr. Green, a collection of Mr. Green columns, but alas, that literary gem is out of print, and only available at used book stores, Amazon, and similar outlets. But here’s an equally wonderful choice: Sweaters. They truly are the gift that keeps on giving, because they enable your friends and relatives to turn down the heat. A comfortable sweater makes it easy to lower home temperatures forever, reducing the amount of natural gas burned for heating by 2 percent for each degree. In your neck of the woods, dropping your thermostat from, say, 78 to 68 degrees will cut annual household carbon dioxide emissions by more than half a ton while also cutting the heating bills. (Note: this applies to gas furnaces or electric heaters, not heat pump systems, which should be set back no more than 2 degrees.)

Yes, give sweaters, or if you prefer, cardigans. Sure, they laughed at Jimmy Carter for wearing a cardigan during his stern but prophetic talk on our  stupefying waste of energy back in 1977, when global warming was but a gleam in Exxon’s eye, but then a prophet is not without honor except in his own country. There were plenty of reasons to cut energy use back then, but denial prevailed. The only thing Carter got wrong was that he underestimated the amount of fossil fuel that could be wrung from underground, but that was before fracking took off in all its environmental horror.

So when gift-wrapping those elegant sweaters, why not swathe them in Jimmy’s words? He called our energy challenges the “the moral equivalent of war. . . .We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now.”

Print ’em out in holiday colors in a celebratory font, or hand-letter them for a personal touch. Republicans might choose to go for the wisdom of Melvin Laird, the eight-time GOP congressman and Richard Nixon’s secretary of defense, back in the days before the party buried its head in the tar sands of denial. Speaking to the conservative American Enterprise Institute in 1975, Laird called for "a very tough, firm, hard rationing system" to cut energy consumption, “because there is no awareness as far as the public is concerned to this energy problem we face.” Laird blasted politicians for ignoring the energy crisis, saying it was their fault that Americans did not realize how serious the need was to cut oil consumption. (Even the most liberal politician couldn’t get away with such straight talk today.)

Some further quotes for your Carter cardigan: 

Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars.

Our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future.

With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden.

Happy Holidays!