I recently journeyed to the Mojave Desert to film a segment for Big Green Lies, the television special starring Seventh Generation's Jeffrey Hollender coming to Fine Living Network at 9 pm on Earth Day. Here's how the adventure unfolded…

Tuesday 5:00 pm, Los Angeles
The snowstorm back east turned getting here from Vermont into a close call, but I'm staring at palm trees and the giant "Hollywood" sign so it's clear I've made it. L.A. gives new meaning to the word sprawl. Very few green spaces of any note. I do pass one in the cab: The Kenneth Hahn Recreation Area, which occupies an ancient geological uplift in the center of the city. It's filled with oil rigs pumping crude out of the ground. A strange sight indeed.

Tuesday 7:00 pm
I meet producer Jay, writer Dave, and Director Kay along with promotion agent Jenna. Seventh Generation Chief Inspired Protagonist Jeffrey Hollender and Martin "Scienceman" Wolf are there, too. We run through the plan: We'll be riding to Joshua Tree National Park to test whether you can save gasoline by shutting off your car's AC and rolling down the windows, which most of our fathers insisted was the case. But is this a Big Green Lie? We'll soon see. I've done the research for an experiment that Martin has designed and Jeffrey will supervise. We'll gas up two cars and spend the day taking measurements as we drive them across the desert.

Wednesday 4:45 am
You have got to be kidding me. It's way too early to be saving the planet. Martin cheerfully tells me that in Vermont it's really a quite reasonable 8:15. I briefly consider strangling him. Then Jay is here and we're off.

Wednesday 6:00 am, West Hollywood
The production office is a beehive of activity. At its core, filmmaking is really just an exercise in logistics. A small army of production people handle the coordination, lugging mysterious cases and crates to an armada of vehicles. Everyone is going over details, calling out questions. Jeffrey, Martin, and I pile into Jenna's rental car and head out for points unknown, out of Hollywood, past Paramount Studios, onto the freeway, and into the mountains. We pass an absolutely massive wind farm. I have never seen anything like it. Our carload of hardcore eco-types is captivated. Literally a thousand giant turbines, perhaps more, cover a vast valley floor and spill up the hillsides. We are in a great sea of slow motion blades turning gracefully. It is a beautiful sight and it fills us with intense hope. There is a way out of our petro-addiction. We're driving right through it.

Wednesday 8:00 am, Joshua Tree National Park
After a two hour journey, we have arrived. What a place! Bizarre trees by the thousands rise in a virtual forest amidst strange boulder-strewn rock formations. While we wait for the others, Ranger Don tells me about the region's cryptobiotic soils, a weird living crust on the desert's surface composed of microplants and tiny organisms, which together would seem to definitively prove that nature truly does abhor a vacuum. Eventually the rest of the team arrives. We drive to our location in the park and start setting up shop. Soundman Mike wires up Jeffrey, Martin, and I. We each have a tiny transmitter clipped to our waists and a wire that snakes through our clothing to a hidden microphone literally taped to our chests. The transmitters are turned on and from here on out absolutely everything we say will be recorded. There are four different cameras and one or more is nearly always filming us whether we're just getting a bagel from the food table or talking about the experiment. It's a little disconcerting at first, strange to have almost every private conversation interrupted by cameras in your face. But soon we adjust. By the end of the day I won't even know they're there. Jeffrey, Martin and I hang out. We go over things with Kay. Finally, we are ready for the first shot.

Wednesday 10:30 am, Joshua Tree National Park
We have two cars and two hosts. Sara gets in our 2008 Mustang. Dave sits in the '65 classic. Each is filmed behind the wheel introducing themselves for the show's opening sequence. Jeffrey is ad libbing for the camera about the purpose of the show, which is to dispel green myths and get to the truth about the environmental issues that are on everyone's mind.

Wednesday 12:00 pm
Kay and I have a conversation about my big "scene," which is the first thing we'll film after lunch. Suddenly, there's a pit in my stomach where an appetite used to be. What have I gotten myself into?

Wednesday 12:30 pm
Geoff, are you ready for your close-up? I'll be introducing the experiment and fielding questions from the crew, then turning things over to Martin who will lead us through the experiment. Oddly there's so much going on that I don't have any time for nerves. We block out the shot. I jokingly ask why everyone is staring at me. Then we rehearse with cameras running. Kay and Jay seem genuinely happy with my performance. I'm hugely relieved. A lot of effort has gone into getting me here. I don't want to disappoint. We do it two more times and suddenly it hits me: This is the most fun I've had in ages. Hollywood, here I come!

Wednesday 1:30 pm
The experiment begins. We plan to fill the gas tanks to the very top of each car's filler tube. Then Dave and Sara will drive the cars with the AC on and the windows up. When they come back to base camp, we'll see how far down in the tube the gas had gone, calculate the amount we used, and get a miles-per-gallon figure. We get a shot of Sara and Dave driving off.

Wednesday 5:30 pm
They return, and Martin calculates the data. We eagerly await the answer: Does it matter if we use the air conditioning when we drive? Or is driving with the windows down to save gas just a big green lie? Cut! To learn the answer, catch the whole adventure on Big Green Lies premiering Earth Day, April 22nd at 9:00 pm on the Fine Living Network. See you then!