Some folks from the Port of Long Beach stopped by this afternoon as part of an East Coast PR kick. They threw some pretty interesting stats my way, including this one: over a 24-hour period, a single cargo ship sitting at Long Beach with its engines running throws off more emissions than all the passenger car traffic in the Los Angeles metro area.

It started to make sense why a few years ago Long Beach, the nation's second largest port behind next-door neighbor L.A., decided to "go green." These days, it bills itself as "Your Environmentally Friendly Port" and does things like pay carriers to use low-sulfur fuel and cut their engines near land. On October 1, it's rolling out strict new emissions standards for the trucks that pick up and drop off cargo. To pay for that program, which includes the port helping to finance some 16,000 replacement trucks, there's going to be a new fee of $35 per 20-foot shipping container.

I asked the Long Beach folks if that sort of imposition—er, initiative—didn't drive away business. Maybe a little bit, they said, but where would most shippers go? L.A. is on the green bandwagon, too, and since half of the cargo that comes in through Long Beach stays in southern California (the second interesting stat they threw at me), did it really make sense to ship into Vancouver or Mexico and then have to drive all those TVs and end tables back to California?

What's more valuable to them, they've decided, is staying ahead of enviro-loving lawmakers who are probably aware of things like how emissions from cargo ships compare to those from passenger cars. "You have to attack the future before it attacks you," said James Hankla, one of the visiting port officials. It's a classic strategy: take ownership of the issue and decide how to handle it before anyone else gets a chance. Pretty smart, I thought.

Barbara!

Like most run-of-the-mill consumers, I did a little jig this morning when I read that the FTC would be banning prerecorded sales calls. I don't care if advances in call-center telephony boost American productivity, picking up the receiver and being confronted with a prerecorded message is annoying.

Sure, there are exceptions, the same exceptions there are for the Do Not Call registry. Charities, political parties, people conducting surveys. Also, interestingly, banks, insurance companies and communications firms (like telephone companies), since they don't fall under the purview of the FTC.

But, in general, as the Wall Street Journal told me:

Beginning on Sept. 1, 2009, telemarketers can make recorded calls only to consumers who agree in writing to receive them.

And who in their right mind would write a letter to a telemarketer?

Well, as it turns out, when you take the time to read the regulation, you find out that companies can get your permission for prerecorded sales calls electronically. Here's the passage:

Because it always has been the Commission's intention to minimize any paperwork cost
or burden on businesses by permitting electronic signatures as evidence of compliance with the
amendment, the Commission has added an identical footnote to the proposed amendment so that
sellers can be assured that written agreements obtained in compliance with E-SIGN will satisfy the requirements of the amendment, such as, for example, agreements obtained via an email or
website form, telephone keypress, or voice recording.

The regulation does go on to say:

Any agreement obtained pursuant to E-SIGN must be sufficient to show that the consumer: (1) received clear and conspicuous disclosure of the consequences of providing the requested consent – i.e., that the consumer will receive future calls that deliver prerecorded messages – and (2) having received this information, agrees unambiguously to receive such calls at a telephone number the consumer designates.

But still: Web site form? You mean those things I routinely check the box for without reading at all?

I don't want to give the FTC too much grief over a consumer-friendly regulation that I'm sure the telemarketing industry is none-too-thrilled with. Still, it's not quite as jig-worthy as I first thought.

Barbara!