By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

America’s most beloved treehugger said it better than anyone more than 150 years ago when he padded around Walden Wood on foot, marveling at the harmony of nature and fretting about its future.

But while Thoreau’s sentiments were lost in the din of industrial progress, they never died.

They are alive in the hearts of many Americans. The Union of Concerned Scientists has brought together some of these modern Thoreaus in an anthology of short essays, Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming (Penguin Classic, June 2009). These vignettes by regular folks worried about global warming, species loss, pollution and the future of our natural spaces may just move you to action in your own neighborhood.

Many of the essayists are scientists, botanists and ecologists, engaged in trying to save the planet, or some corner of it. Their contributions give the book a degree of authority as they explain about the sea bears, salmon, butterflies and plants threatened by global warming.

In a story called “Garden of Ghosts,” biologist Mark Hixon tells how one day the trees in a wonderful “Eden” that he’d been studying all turned “white as snow” — a reaction to warming temperatures. Imagine an ecosystem so drastically affected that its trees suddenly die. (I won’t spoil the kicker here.)

But at least half of the authors in Thoreau’s Legacy are people from other disciplines and a variety of places. These writers, educators, business owners, clergy, fishermen and farmers, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, tell more personal stories. They reminisce about earlier times and how progress has stressed the land. They share how they’re trying to save energy and live more lightly on the planet, and speak eloquently of their love of home and the nature around it.

Some of their stories are irretrievably sad.

Melissa M. Juchniewicz recalls growing up near Walden Pond where “I went to sleep on summer nights to the deafening music of the bullfrogs.” Today, those  frogs are gone. “Years later, when I visited my mother at White Pond [near Walden], I was stunned by the silence. In that whole summer night, I didn’t hear a single frog.”

Juchniewicz tells how she doesn’t mind sharing her hometown with others, but the loss of the frogs to pollution, pesticides and ultra-violet rays is a “boundless tragedy.”

This book does seem to convey boundless tragedy. There are fading glaciers, strip mines, threatened dolphins, acidifying oceans.

But the ardor and determination of many of the essayists gives us hope.

Jennifer B. Freeman, a freelance science writer, tells how she and her kids offered to cancel unwanted catalogs for the people in their apartment building. In one day, her family canceled 85 catalogs for grateful neighbors.

“Doing favors for the planet is good for your soul,” Freeman writes. “Perhaps that’s why our family continued to get notes like this one, from a friend for whom we canceled fifty-nine catalogs in a week. She said “I feel clean, purged and righteous.”

Thoreau’s Legacy is available from the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists at their website in a limited edition hardcover.  An interactive version can be downloaded for free, and there’s an ebook available from Penguin Classics.

The full-color book makes a nice table copy, given that guests could read an essay or two while they wait for their wine. It includes a forward by Barbara Kingsolver.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The Denim Diet: Sixteen Simple Habits to Get You into Your Dream Pair of Jeans by Kami Gray claims to be a “no-nonsense guide to a smaller you and a healthier planet.” While I would not go far to say that it is a guide to a healthier planet, it does provide a glimpse into an environmental approach to dieting.

This book would appeal to people who are unfamiliar with the benefits to eating organically, a great source for the newly green.

Gray explains what it takes to be certified as organic by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is also notes that just because food is labeled as “all natural” or “100% natural” does not necessarily mean that it is, because the term “natural” is not yet regulated by the Federal Drug Administration. Anything can be labeled as natural. Go beyond the label to look at the actual ingredients, Gray advises.

Since most people avoid organic food because of the cost, she also provides some money-saving tricks, like buying fruits in season and freezing them and buying store-brand organic foods, which are less expensive.

We have all heard the debate between good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates. By now, most of us know that white is bad and wheat is good. Author Gray provide green reasons for eating wheat: Whole grains have not yet been processed, so instead of using the Earth’s resources to process them, we use our body’s energy to process whole grains. Better for the environment, and our health. Even better, the term “whole grains” has been defined by the FDA. All three parts of the grain must be present in the same relative proportion that they naturally exist in to qualify for that label. So consumers can trust this information on food products.

When most people think about environmentally conscious eating, they assume that eating meat is totally out. This is not true with The Denim Diet. Gray explains that there is a way to be an “ethical omnivore”. You can choose high quality meats without added chemicals, grass-fed beef (which don’t require antibiotics and aren’t fed grains that they can’t digest well) and fish that are more eco-friendly (varieties that have not been over-fished or caught using environmentally destructive methods).

The Denim Diet offers some eye-opening statistics that have the potential to sway some of those who are not concerned about the environment. But overall, the book is more focused on careful, healthful eating and will appeal to those who are curious about what they should be putting into their bodies — green or not, so they can still fit in their jeans.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

From Green Right Now Reports

This Friday is World Environment Day and the big event will be the global premiere of the environmental film Home. Narrated by Glenn Close and directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the photographer and author of Earth From Above, the film can be seen in movie theaters, on DVD, and for free on television and the Internet.

The documentary about environmental issues, which was filmed in 50 countries and shot entirely from the sky in high definition, is a commentary on the major environmental and social issues challenging our world and calls for a new awareness that protecting the earth is indispensable. The premise: In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high as humankind has barely 10 years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption.

Arthus-Bertrand’s collaborators on the project were producer/director Luc Besson and Francois-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of the French luxury group PPR, which is the majority shareholder of PUMA and the world exclusive partner for the film.

“Creating awareness of our environment’s emergency state is crucial and the first step for an improved handling of our natural resources,” Jochen Zeitz, chairman and CEO of PUMA, said in a statement. “In line with our PUMAVision concept, PUMA has implemented numerous environmental initiatives through various programs that aim at reducing our ‘paw print’ — the effects that PUMA’s operations and actions have on the environment. The Home film inspires us to work towards making a positive contribution to our planet.”

Proceeds from the sale of merchandising products related to the film will be donated to the organization www.goodplanet.org.

A son of Appalachia and its coalfields, Arnold “Bud” Fultz has not forgotten his hometown of Wallins Creek, Kentucky. After 25 years as an airline exec with now-defunct Pan American World Airways, he felt compelled to speak out about what the coal industry was doing to the part of the country he calls home. In his book Fixing the Ungodly Mess: A Pathway to Change (AuthorHouse, 2008), Fultz takes aim at mountaintop removal mining, a technique of withdrawing coal from the mountains by removing up to 1,000 feet of a mountain’s summit.

“My heart never left the area and I still had relatives there.. In July 1999, I was watching Nightline. The camera was panning over my old town. It was a piece about a seventh grade class that was taking on the coal industry. “

Between 1985 and 2002, Fultz says, mountain-top removal mining destroyed seven percent of the forests in Appalachia and buried or polluted about 1,200 miles of streams.

“I drove up there and visited the teacher who said I was one of the first ones to notice. It was then that I was introduced to some of the community rabble rousers or activists. The teacher, Judy Hensley, encouraged me to dig deeper into the story.

“I started out to write a series of articles. By this point I had left the airlines and had started three assisted-living facilities with my wife and was living in Tampa. I wanted to get back in touch with the people of Kentucky and West Virginia.

As Fultz began to research , he was surprised to find how damaging the coal industry was to its neighboring communities. He reports in his book that there are more deaths from breathing coal pollution than the number of employed miners in Appalachia (about 30,000).

In addition, he says there are coal-related medical expenses. Small particulate matter from coal combustion crosses from the lungs into the bloodstream, increasing the chance for cardiac disease, heart attacks and premature deaths. Coal burning for electricity emits 96,000 pounds of mercury each year, says Fultz. A 2004 EPA report stated that one in six women of childbearing age in the United States has enough mercury concentration in her blood to risk brain damage to her newborn.

The series of articles became chapters, which eventually became a book.

While Fultz is encouraged that President Elect Obama says mountain top removal is an issue he wants addressed by his administration, Fultz does have concerns about how this will be accomplished. “Our new Energy Secretary, [Nobel Prize winning physicist] Steven Chu, has indicated that clean coal will play a part in the country’s energy needs.” (Many environmentalists consider “clean coal” to be an oxymoron; it refers to  unproven, expensive carbon capture and sequestration techniques.)

“All the clean coal in the world will not stop the environmental abuses that now exist,” says Fultz. ”Look at some of our rivers in coal country. They are dying. There are no fish and the water is filthy.”

In addition, he says, clean coal won’t address the fact that between 1,500 and 2,000 miners die each year from black lung disease from mining coal. And clean coal won’t end the intergenerational poverty that is the direct result of the coal industry’s relationship with the government, which has often argued “without mining, the coal region would be nothing.”

To fix “the ungodly mess” as his title indicates, Fultz says visionary leadership is needed, with particular attention on three fronts: Renewable energy technology; affordable and accessible health care
and a re-vitalized education system

“My passionate objective is for citizens, both in the Appalachian coalfields and across the country…to rock the hell out of the boat – to reverse ungodly policies, to regain our country’s greatness.”

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Published to coincide with the historic moment at which, for the first time, more humans live in cities than in the country — and, as the author notes, “one-third of these urban dwellers — more than one billion people — live in slums,” the exceptional photography book The Places We Live puts a human face on appalling environmental issues without resorting to sentimental clichés.

Photographer Jonas Bendiksen does this by not looking for the button-pushing universal image (the malnourished girl with watery eyes, say) but by meeting individual people, listening to their stories, and visiting their homes: The bulk of the book consists of four-panel spreads in which Bendiksen places his camera in the center of a single-room dwelling and photographs its four walls and the inhabitants who share them; accompanying the layouts are first-person narratives that can dispel myths about poverty (as with Shuresh Chandra, who shares an apparently bed-free room with three other grown men despite having a bachelor’s degree) and caution readers against pitying the subjects (”I don’t know how you see my house,” one man says, “but to me it’s beautiful”).

Focusing on four centers of slum population — Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta and Caracas – the book may seem to focus on environments but quietly emphasizes the individuals who sometimes built them out of trash. A Jakarta family of five, for instance, lives underneath a bridge, squeezed into a box structure whose roof is waist-high and whose walls are patched with stickers advertising Dunlop tires. The family endures terrifying conditions (rising floodwater and the possibility of a bridge collapse are daily worries), but when Bendiksen’s camera looks into their eyes it sees people who don’t look anywhere near giving up.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

The sudden explosion of stories about food shortages resulting from diversion of crops to biofuels may prod Westerners to think, likely for the first time in years, about just what and how much people typically eat in other parts of the world.

The recent paperback Hungry Planet, then, is timely: Though stuffed with enough vibrant photographs to qualify as a coffee table book — and sufficiently foodie-oriented to earn a James Beard Foundation award — its agenda is clearly as much anthropological and environmental as aesthetic.

Photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio visited 24 countries, from Bosnia to Chad and from France to Guatemala. They spent time with 30 normal families — went grocery shopping with them, hung out in the kitchen, and shared meals. Then they took a family portrait, each of which has family members surrounding a week’s worth of groceries — that inventory is enumerated as an introduction to each chapter, broken into categories (Dairy, Grains, etc.) with total food costs listed in U.S. dollars.

It’s fascinating to flip through this travelogue and see the extent to which globalization and industrialization have changed the face of food: while the Aboubakar family in Chad (they’re refugees from Darfur) is living on $1.23 worth of bulk goods each week, with a small tub of bottled water the only hint of mass-packaged food, the vast majority of people have some processed food in their diets — from Pringles in Greenland and Kuwait, to KFC in China, to the astonishing 24 quarts of Coke consumed by a family of five (one of whom is only a year old) in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Even so, the amount of fresh and unprocessed foods varies widely from place to place, as do habits surrounding shopping and eating. The authors pay attention to this, including plenty of photos of daily life, before proceeding to include a local recipe. Interspersed are thoughtful big-picture essays from people like Michael Pollan, whose recent In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto remains a hot seller for eco-aware chefs. A scaled-down version of Hungry Planet, aimed at youngsters from eighth grade up, will be released in July under the title What the World Eats.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April 17 takes a historical view that begins on the placid shore of Walden Pond.

The book, published in the long-running and invaluable Library of America series (more often the home of fiction and poetry) is an anthology of work by American authors, thinkers, and activists writing about environmentalism in all its aspects — from 19th century meditations on the practices of Native American tribes to overpopulation, industrial agriculture and, of course, climate change.

The roster isn’t predictable: alongside Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Al Gore we get songwriters (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me,” Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”), a small chunk of the Philip K. Dick story that inspired Blade Runner, and even a cartoon strip by R. Crumb — each of which proves to be perfectly at home. Thought-provoking recent work, like Michael Pollan’s writing on food, and landmarks like Carson’s Silent Spring are joined by dusty but relevant documents like public speeches and political cartoons; there are even tidbits from one or two folks — like legendary huckster P.T. Barnum — who have rarely if ever before been positioned as proto-environmentalists. (Remarkably, the latter example is a complaint about the intrusion of billboard advertisements that “advertise in the midst of landscapes or scenery, in such a way as to destroy or injure their beauty by introducing totally incongruous and relatively vulgar associations.”)

Though carefully curated by a writer, Bill McKibben, who has crafted passionate arguments in the past, the collection isn’t meant to beat up on readers who oppose one or another course of action. Rather, as Al Gore puts it in a Foreword, the selections “show us that environmentalism, while inevitably a source of conflict, is inherent in our national character, a fundamental part of our heritage as Americans. Thomas Jefferson believed that closeness to the land was essential to a virtuous citizenry, and the great writers in this collection carry this vision forward in profound and divergent ways.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By John DeFore

Tuesday sees the release on DVD of one of the higher-profile entries in the wave of documentaries about the environment, The 11th Hour. Like its big brother An Inconvenient Truth, it lands on retail shelves in slimmed-down packaging — this one replacing the usual bulky plastic case, with a paper sleeve recycled from 100% post-consumer content; unlike Truth, its price is slimmed-down as well: At $4.99, this disc clearly wants to enter as many living rooms as possible.

Through the eyes of a film critic, judging only how a movie works and not what its intentions are, Hour is an awfully weak entry into the contemporary documentary scene. Its pace is monotonous, its content over familiar, its incorporation of stock footage often distractingly untethered from whatever topic is currently under discussion.

It’s flawed enough, in fact, to make one think even more fondly of Al Gore’s movie, which may have suffered its own aesthetic challenges but packed a polemical punch sufficient to keep viewers engaged.

What this film might or might not mean to the world, of course, is another matter, since a message’s impact can rely on so many external factors. (Anyone whose world view was permanently shaped by clumsily made elementary school films about drugs or nuclear war can attest to this.) Will the narrating presence of a clearly very involved Leonardo DiCaprio help the important message of Hour worm its way into the minds of a new generation? If so, let’s get this thing playing in school auditoriums around the world. (It is on a tour of college campuses.)

A stiffly structured rundown of the ecological threat facing humanity, 11th Hour breaks its message up intelligently: what is really happening to the planet; how our lifestyle contributes to it; why our leaders are doing next to nothing; what assumptions in our personal lives lie between us and change; and, finally, how people around the world are working to make a difference.

The early parts of this agenda sometimes verge on the cringe-inducing, with the filmmakers’ kitchen-sink onslaught of frightening visuals matching their short-attention-span hop through everything from Hurricane Katrina to industrial overfishing. DiCaprio’s earnest delivery of his text (he was also one of the producers) furthers the sense that we’re watching an “educational film” that will sum up what we already know rather than inform us or lend new perspectives.

But the final chapter works best, and is clearly most important for a movie so intent on convincing viewers to put down the Hummer catalog and start building windmills. Some of the interviewees who pop up are indeed inspirational, and a giddy buzz generates around, say, examples of architecture that generates all the power it needs to function. If the movie had focused solely on these visionaries, devoting its ninety minutes to only a handful of projects, it might have built to a climax that was both rousing and useful.

But The 11th Hour has too much on its plate to linger like that, so viewers must let the talking-head messages flow by while trying to extract snippets that are personally meaningful. For instance, the impressively succinct way a critic of overconsumption gets across the idea that “things are thieves of time,” requiring us to work to buy them, fret over maintaining them, and then — here’s the ugly part — spend a few centuries dealing with the mess our making, using, and disposing of them has left behind.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

It’s no surprise that Big Energy gets the role of Goliath in Mat Hames’ and George Sledge’s Fighting Goliath: The Texas Coal Wars, a documentary produced and narrated by Robert Redford and The Redford Center at Sundance Preserve that follows a recent chain of events in which coal companies tried to fast track a bundle of new greenhouse gas-emitting plants. The surprise comes when a swell of opposition is able to seize the slingshot and fell the giant.

But the coal war that Texans fought (and still fight) is becoming all too familiar in other states. Some observers might describe the burgeoning trend as a bonafide coal rush. According to the filmmakers’ research, that’s what the governor of Texas and powerful coal interests tried to do to taxpayers in 2005-2007– by fast-tracking permits for a score of coal-fired power plants, shortening the process from 12- 18 months to a mellow six months.

The reason for the scramble: Greater environmental responsibility is inevitable in the coming years, Hames says. Many companies want to “grandfather” in coal-powered plants before laws prohibit them altogether or force executives to spend big bucks to clean up the process.

Yet, in one of those all-too-rare instances where the will of the people trumps big-energy finagling, the steamrolling efforts fizzled. As the film illustrates, there are still times when angry citizens decide they’re not going to let a handful of CEO’s build 19 belching power plants in one fell swoop (11 of those plants by a single company) without a full-on Texas brawl.

And after months and months of public pressure and legal wranglings, the number of plants planned was dropped to three. (For now. Read the post in 11thHourAction.)

The documentary is about a grassroot group’s battle and quasi-victory. But more than that, Fighting Goliath is about the strangely harmonic convergence of ranchers, farmers, town-folk, big city mayors, small burb mayors and environmentalists who banded together and forced the industry to scale back its plans – a decision that was announced last fall. Most environmentalists would call that a victory.

Redford apparently does. The activist, director and actor had been paying attention to the situation in Texas, where he frequently visited his grandparents as a child. And when his Sundance Preserve began meeting with mayors around the country regarding environmental issues and needs, the coal wars in Texas emerged as a symbol of bigger ills, nationwide.

The film, which is 30 minutes long and focuses on two small towns that would be most affected by the cluster of plants, began touring the festival circuit early this year. Hames and Sledge hope to get national distribution soon. For now, the filmmakers are starting to schedule individual screenings in small towns around the country, particularly in the Midwest, where similar coal wars have broken out.

In a recent conversation, co-director Hames, whose Alpheus Media also produced the 13-part PBS series, “State of Tomorrow,” talked about the country’s coal wars and how this project landed in his and Sledge’s lap.

Q: How did “Fighting Goliath” originate?
A: The project began for me when a woman named Jill Tidman at the Redford Center at Sundance Preserve called me. The Preserve had been doing a gathering every year called the Sundance Summit, where they bring in mayors from various towns around the country – small towns and large towns – and talk with them about things relating to the environment. And at the Summit for the past two years, coal has emerged as a big issue. … There’s a coal boom going on right now. It’s been huge, and the organizers at Sundance have been paying attention to Texas (and how it thwarted the coal rush), and in advance of last October’s summit they said, ‘We’ll have all these mayors together. Let’s make a film about what’s going on in Texas and show it to these mayors. That was the impetus. And from there, it kind of took on a life of its own.

Q: Why do you think Redford was so interested in the topic? And in Central Texas in particular?
A: I think Robert believes the most important thing he can do is affect change at the grassroots level. Mayors are closer to their constituents than any other type of politician or representative. They’re a good group of people to talk to. So the idea for the film came out of those meetings. … I got involved because (Austin documentarian) Laura Dunn made a film called “The Unforeseen” that Robert co-executive produced, about Barton Springs – and she recommended me to him. He lived here a lot as a child. He used to swim in Barton Springs, so he’s really familiar with Central Texas.

Q: So, what happened with the Texas coal war?
A: Coal has become a big issue in the past few years because, first and foremost, we need the energy. Everyone is aware that we need more energy. People such as the (Texas) governor, who are responsible for making sure that our state has enough energy, are looking at all different kinds of ways of providing it.

A good majority of our energy in this country comes from coal, although in Texas, the majority has come from natural gas. But when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita happened, they did significant damage to the refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. So, Gov. (Rick) Perry decided he wanted to fast track the permit process for these coal-powered electricity plants, which is normally 12 to 18 months, by saying that for any new power plants , it can’t take longer than six months. In cutting the permit time down, that suddenly created an environment where coal companies felt welcomed. It was very beneficial to them. And carbon emission standards are only going to get more stringent in the next decade or so, so there’s another sort of thing behind this coal rush – and that’s to build as many coal plants as possible before that happens. So, all of a sudden, you had 19 coal-fired power plants proposed in Texas, and of those 19, one particular company, TXU, was to build 11.

Q: Is this coal rush a national phenomenon?
A: It’s absolutely national (cities and states are running out of existing energy sources and are having to expand their grid to, for now, mostly fossil-fuel based supplements) . But I think this example was widely known by the Summit participants – in particular, Robert Redford. Once the announcement was made that TXU was going to build 11 plants alone, people got angry in Texas and they got energized to fight the coal. … Some of those people included Mayor Laura Miller of Dallas, the Mayor of Arlington, Robert Cluck, Houston Mayor Bill White and Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen Texas in Austin, who formed a coalition. And what they found was that, in order for them to have a legal case to stand on, they’d need to get involvement from cities and towns where those plants were going to be built. They had to essentially get in their cars and drive all over Texas and enlist the help of the mayors in these small towns. So there were big city mayors and small town mayors coming together – ranchers and farmers, people who are not traditionally allied with environmentalists. Some of them were conservative Republicans, some liberal Democrats, but they were all sort of unified behind this.

Q: Didn’t some of these towns want the plants – to provide jobs, boost local economies?
A: There were a lot of people who saw it that way. Their towns could benefit greatly – they could get a new gym built for their schools. They need the jobs. But at the end of the day, most of these people believed that the impact on their children’s health would be more important than those shorter term benefits. … It got kind of crazy (with the coal interests trying to entice or bully municipalities). In fact, a guy from TXU came to one of the town’s school board meetings and told them they could get all kinds of money and that he could show them how to avoid paying taxes. All kinds of crazy things were going on. At the end of the day, the people said no. Now, a year and half later, that town is still hurting. They could have used that money, but they didn’t think it was the right thing to do.

Q: So, what caused the reversal, or near-reversal, of planned plants?
A: Some of it is still going on, but basically, TXU started to take such flak from so many people in Texas that their stock started to fall. And once that happened, they became a target for a takeover. Two very large investment companies (one from outside of Texas) came in and did a leveraged buyout of TXU and promised to bring the number of plants (legal agreements were made) down to three. It’s a sort of victory, but it’s still too early to tell what will happen down the road. And that’s the way the film ends sort of: It’s hopeful and it’s great that these people could come together and cause this sort of change. But the question is, did they just win the battle or was that the war?

Q: Apparently you’ve had an amazingly positive response to this film, since you began showing it at film festivals early this year.
A: We’re getting invitations to screen the film all over the U.S. right now. (Word of mouth has caught like a prairie grass fire, Hames says). We’re just trying to keep up with it. The film is literally out in front of us and we’re chasing it. … We’re looking at screening in places like Kansas (where Gov. Kathleen Sebelius just vetoed a large coal plant) and all around the Midwest, and we look forward to having a lot more screenings in the near future, and eventually hope to air it nationally on television. We’re also working on a distribution deal. For right now, though, we’re focusing on screenings and an outreach that’s hopefully going to be in places you might find these same kinds of battles going on. We’re planning to take the film to small towns and project it onto buildings in town squares, so that people who normally wouldn’t see a film like this will get to see it.

Q: What’s the bigger picture on this for you? Coal is evil and dirty? Mayors are the only trustworthy politicians? Or that it’s possible for the little people to battle and possibly conquer Goliath — that there is at least a slingshot out there?
A: To me, what this whole thing is about is how people from all different walks of life came together to fight something they thought was wrong. If there’s a lesson here to be learned, it’s a lesson about Democracy. And that you need small town people and big city mayors and ranchers and farmers and activists to get together on these issues.

Resources on coal:

Coal Block

Stop The Coal Plant

Natural Resources Defense Council

Mayors For Climate Protection

Additional reading on the Texas fight:

11th Hour Action

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

If timing is everything, then premiering a film that champions biofuels at a time when the news media’s aflame with stories about the problems with biofuels must be a tad discouraging.

But Josh Tickell, creator of Fields of Fuel, does not seem discouraged. Determined, but not discouraged. Tickell, who has been been on a decade-long personal journey to find oil alternatives, still intends to seize his teaching moment. He has broadened the scope of his cinematic work to bring it up to date and refers to the film as a “work-in-progress” because there will be some additions before its Summer 2008 general release.

Whatever personal pangs Tickell must be suffering upon seeing biofuels get a thumbs down on the cover of Time (The Clean Energy Myth, April 7) , are likely to be assuaged by the reception his adventuresome narrative will surely receive. It won the audience award for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and a standing ovation at its screening at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival this past weekend, where audience members praised it for its upbeat message and impressive depth.

The film, 10 years in the making, is stunningly wide ranging. It’s fast-paced and packed with information, covering everything from how fossil fuels were created millions of years ago to Vice President Cheney’s secret meetings with oil CEOs; to the devastating pollution created by the oil industry in Tickell’s native Louisiana, to the little-known fact that Rudolph Diesel’s first patented diesel engine ran not on petrol, but peanut oil – in 1900.

Best of all, it’s entertaining.

Whizzing along with Josh, initially in his circa 1997 Veggie Van, we meet to a diverse chorus of experts and lay persons. There’s a city official in Las Vegas, where they run school buses on biodiesel and a farmer in Australia who powers his entire operation on canola oil. Woody Harrelson delivers a pep talk, telling us that “individuals can affect their perimeter of friends” to become more green. Neil Young and Willie Nelson giggle while fueling Willie’s tour bus with biodiesel. Meanwhile, truckers in Carl’s Corner in Texas report that their rigs run better and cleaner on biodiesel and that the United States’ dependency on foreign oil is, in the words of one, a “flat ass shame.”

Tickell does an amazing job of pulling together multiple, interwoven story lines that add up to an assault on petroleum, the politics of doing nothing and a trumpet call for new technologies. Could the barrage of info leave the uninitiated confused? It’s possible. The film packs it in. But by including his own head-scratching moments and personal discoveries, Tickell puts the brakes on the potential for condescension or abstractions.

The film’s layered narrative (Josh’s personal voyage plus stuff we need to know) helps it rise above mere “gotcha” documentary reporting. This is not just a Big Oil Bad story. Tickell opens his soul, telling us how oil pollution affects the reproductive health of women and babies (including his mother) in the communities where he grew up. He shows us regular folks yearning to do more for the planet and works hard to impart a few key practical points, chiefly: Diesel engines don’t have to run on diesel fuel. Buy a diesel today and you can fill your tank with veggie oil.

Those are valid questions, but in some cases, we’d like to think that the educational and aesthetic powers of a truly fine collection of photographs and words can have such redeeming value that it effectively offsets its environmental weight. Kinda like carbon offsets, except you can hold it in your hands.

One such book that just wows us with its lasting informative value and stunning photography is BIRD, The Definitive Visual Guide, a 485-page collaboration by DK Publishing and the Audubon Society published in October. It just keeps catching our eye. From the arresting cover close up of a Blue-footed Booby through the closing two-page spread featuring a Northern Cardinal radiating red against a snowy background, the photography in this compendium is beyond marvelous. It captures both the elegant motion and the poignant moments of more than 1,400 bird species.

Here birds don’t just fly, they seem to float — over water, skimming the surface with their beaks; over land, scanning the prairies, and at night, owl-eyes blazing. They sink their talons into fish, claw each other in mating rituals, feed their young, mass in migratory clouds of color, preen their gorgeous feathers and guard their nests in communal avian nurseries.

Virtually all types of birds are represented, from colorful Toucans to musical lyrebirds; predatory owls to peaceful songbirds; leggy waterfowl to tiny hummingbirds. All are impressive examples of evolution – some more than others, perhaps, considering the ostrich, the penguin, the Albatross and geese that migrate 6000-plus miles – and yet they appear so vulnerable. Where would be the hummingbirds without the tubular flowers they require? What of the loon, whose habitat has shrunk northward, or California’s condors, whose babies have been afflicted by lead poisoning from ammunition that winds up in its diet? (In October, California banned hunters from using lead shot in the condors’ range.)

Here, too, is the American Bald Eagle, a symbol of might, driven to the brink of extinction in the 20th Century by the use of the pesticide DDT and other pollutants.

For anyone who’s ever interacted with a feathered friend, this book will be a trip down memory lane. I immediately looked up the Barn Owl, fondly remembered from my childhood when I listened to them hooting outside my window, and the Osprey that I studied for a high school science project. I checked on the Blue Heron, the Great Northern Loon, the Red-tailed Hawk and the Northern Goshawk, all of which I have been privileged to see on nature walks bordering places I’ve lived.

It was comforting that all these birds were documented, and still alive somewhere, even if their range has been curtailed. This is where BIRD, the book, can leave a positive imprint on the shape of things to come, by reawakening our sense of stewardship. It is so comprehensive and the birds featured so diverse, you can’t help but come away with a renewed appreciation and concern for these highly evolved creatures.

Living by the reduce/reuse/recycle mantra can be a challenge, a chore, a karmic satisfaction or tangible improvement in lifestyle. But it’s rarely something one participates in avidly, anticipating it eagerly while at work or singing its praises at parties.

Lately, though, I’ve been obsessed with a novel way of reducing the world’s waste — I’ve willingly lost sleep over it, in fact, thanks to an entity called BookMooch. More on it in a moment.

To the extent that recycling consumer goods has caught on in America, success is surely tied closely to simplicity: If curbside pickup comes as often as garbage collection and what goes in which bin is easy to grasp, there’s little reason for people not to participate.

But re-use — finding a second life for unwanted possessions without sending them through an industrial recycling process — is tougher, if only because no ragman comes down the street each week to take discards off our hands. In the vast middle ground between items that can be tossed in a recycling bin and those (cars, computers) that are worth taking the time to re-sell are the lamps, dishes, and clothing that linger in closets or attics, annoying us vaguely until there’s enough accumulated to justify a trip to Goodwill.

Donating goods to charity instead of sending them to a landfill is a huge step in the right direction, of course, but it isn’t as satisfying as knowing someone who wants something at the very moment we tire of it — or as rewarding as learning that that person has something you want, too, and will swap you for it.

Since the dawn of the Internet, people have tried using the Web to address this inherent desire and need to exchange our “stuff.” The net has facilitated all kinds of trade, from the classified-style Craigslist to questionably-legal vote swapping. But many efforts have fallen by the wayside: Of five barter sites mentioned in a 2000 article that still ranks high in Google searches, none continue to exist in their original form. It turns out there are plenty of obstacles to anonymous, free-floating barter.

One problem is determining what things are of equal value to both parties, which is why most sites that have flourished limit what sort of goods they deal with. Some anything-goes sites do exist, like U-Exchange, which currently boasts 27,000 members in a hundred countries, but they tend to be like gigantic versions of the classified section — places you visit infrequently, with a specific transaction in mind, and must dig through (often unsuccessfully) to find the person whose needs match yours. Not really something to integrate into your daily reuse/recycle routine.

One way to simplify matters is to limit trading to certain kinds of goods. The well-received Zunafish, for example, allows you to trade a book for a book, a CD for a CD, a game for a game. But it can take a while before you find a member who wants your old copy of Sting’s “Ten Summoner’s Tales” and also happens to have a disc you’re dying to hear.