Upon hearing that I was skipping the New York Film Festival press screening of The Darjeeling Limited in favor of a TED Salon at the Asia Center dubbed “Hot Science: Radical Ideas To Combat the Climate Crisis,” a friend of mine quipped: “TED: The only thing whiter and more precious than a Wes Anderson movie.” Having since seen Darjeeling, I’d argue that Wes Anderson still has the edge, but point taken. The attendees were overwhelmingly affluent, white, well-educated, liberal New Yorkers who have probably donated to Hillary or Barack, or will soon, and were dropping in for an evening of light social engagement the same way they might go to an NYFF premiere or a tasteful soiree. I don’t mean to put myself above them, though it sounds like I am, because, really, I was doing exactly the same thing. It’s just that the event had a disquietingly insular, self-congratulatory air about it.

Which is not to say that the talks weren’t fascinating, because they were. Five speakers (all white and male) offered perspectives on and potential solutions to the climate crisis, some of which were indeed radical—one presenter weighed the pros and cons of shooting sulfates into the upper atmosphere to mitigate the effects of global warming by increasing the earth’s albedo; another championed the idea of obtaining additional solar power from space; still another advocated dumping large quantities of iron dust into the oceans to spur the regrowth of maritime ecosystems. It was leaps and bounds beyond An Inconvenient Truth in terms of sophistication, though to be fair, the audience wasn’t the same. The speakers were all fairly effective presenters and PowerPointers, able to mix complex facts with enough levity to keep things moving along briskly. I left the auditorium with a lot on my mind, and a few days later bought this book, which also offers radical ideas on similar issues.

But what really got me were the swag bags. Now, gift bags are a fact of life at fetes like these, and naturally so; sponsors associate themselves with the events because they want access to the “influencers,” “thought leaders,” “tastemakers,” et al, and giving those people some products to walk out with the door with makes it more likely they’ll remember the sponsor along with the event. It’s simple direct marketing. Still, leaving aside the fact that three of the top six TED Salon sponsors were Shell, BMW, and FedEx (what sorts of emissions are those three companies collectively responsible for?!), the physical reality of these bags, stuffed to the gills with products designed to save the world one purchase at a time, seemed so antithetical to everything that had been talked about for the previous two hours. I’m sure that these swag bags were nothing compared to ones handed out at the annual TED conference in Monterey (to say nothing of ginormous prestige events like the Oscars), but still, I was floored. Literally—the bags were heavy enough to dislocate a shoulder. I’m sure that a fair number of “TEDsters” took unanticipated cab rides home to stash their booty. Over the coming months as I enjoy my organic cotton BeLeaf tote and my Nau rain slicker, my Basf notebook and my Real Soy beanpod candle, my Bear Naked all-natural granola and my Green Mountain Jane Goodall Gombe Reserve coffee, my OptionsForLife naturally-derived biodegradable kitchen cleaner with peroxide and my Feit Electric energy-saving EcoBulb, my Avalon Organics soothing lip balm and my Kimberly Sayer eye lift gel, I’ll be thinking about the one issue that wasn’t really discussed—a runaway consumer culture for which no one seems to be able to find a cure.*

_{*Update: I have since really enjoyed a great many of these products.}