Like lots of people, I have often thought that we could make use of the power of the sun and wind to provide clean energy to run the planet.

I take advantage of them in my own small way with a yard mounted windmill hooked to a pump in my pond and with a solar radio.

But what about the energies generated by the teeming masses of humans around the world?

A couple of MIT Department of Architecture graduate students have come up with an idea that harnesses the power of human movement to create electricity.

Shocking, hmm? The idea isn't new.

People have been working to try and use the power of people to run the engines of the world since the ancient Greeks.

But this idea, dubbed, "Crowd Farm" technology, is intriguing because it took first place at a sustainable construction competition.

The way that Crowd Farms would work is with a responsive sub-floor system made up of blocks that compress slightly under the force of human footsteps.

They would be installed beneath, say, a train or subway station's main loading plaform.

The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of electric current.

In other ingenious methods, NASA and the Pentagon are working on harvesting the energy that is in the human body using Piezoelectric shoes, which give a spark with each step, and with inertial energy scavenging (the way that some wrist watches work) and also with (no kidding) urine-based fuel cells (don't ask).

This is all neat and good, but "Crowd Farm" sounds like the name of a bad punk band.

And though these emerging technologies are good news for the planet, here are some other, local ways I have come up with that the extra power of the people could be harnessed:

Think about the zillions of cars that travel the freeways around the planet each day.

They zing past 320th street at 60-plus miles an hour and generate a lot of wind. People are not going to stop driving anytime soon.

Why not fix small wind turbines along the interstates and hook them all to a cable that supplies power to the main grid? Add fully electric cars to the mix and you're approaching self-perptuation.

How about mounting large vacuums over City Council and School Board meetings to trap the production of hot air for use in heating the King County Aquatic Center?

Take about 100 gallons of Red Bull, Starbucks Canned Espresso, or any of the other sugar and caffeine-laden energy drinks and put it in a crop duster.

On the weekends, fly over Tacoma just before the Over the Bridge Run and coat the athletes with a fine mist of go-juice.

Then all you have to do is herd them through a turn-stile and into giant hamster-wheels. Think of the voltage!

Remember Sanjaya and Blake the Beatbox? (It hasn't been that long ago, has it?). If we had tapped into all the TV antennas and cable boxes around town the media hype that burned up the airwaves could have been enough juice to power the new Community Center.

And speaking of TV, we could install thousands of televisions pumping out those high volume Sleep Country mattress and Empire Today carpeting ads along the walls of the Commons.

The resulting annoyance generated would make shoppers move so quickly that they would finish their shopping early and the lights could be shut off at noon.

The surfeit of tanning beds around the town could be put to better use than simply browning our citizens.

Since most of them are situated next to Subway, Blimpie or Quizno's sandwich joints, put a doorway between the businesses and install toasting racks on the top half of each tanning bed.

This could save tons of coal each year, and the marketing advantage is obvious too: Come in for a Tan and a Sandwich.

How about a new reality show where contestants all live together in one locked and sealed house with no shower.

The resulting gases collected could be routed to provide more power for the Lakota Treatment Sewage Plant.

What? A show like that is already in the works?

Somehow, I just knew it.