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This week’s post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign

That’s the trailer for the powerful new documentary “Coal Country.” If you haven’t heard about this film yet, you need to take a look at the website and learn more about the devastating effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Executive producer Mari-Lynn Evans and writer/producer/director Phylis Geller do an incredible job of portraying the controversy between the coal industry and local residents in many Appalachian towns.

We want to spread the word about “Coal Country” because people must know about this destructive practice and get involved to stop it: So we’re giving you the opportunity to see the film before the general public does.

The movie premieres on the Planet Green network on Nov. 14 at 8 p.m. EST, but you can receive a free 45-minute sneak preview DVD of the film by signing up to host a house party the week of Nov. 10-14 with the Sierra Club.

The reviews of this great film are already in -- on Tuesday night at Town Hall in New York City, legendary Appalachian musicians shared the stage with activists and celebrities for the New York premiere of this film. It was a tremendous hit with the 1,000+ people in attendance in New York, who were also treated to performances by musicians including Kathy Mattea and Jean Ritchie, artists who donated their time and talents to help advance the cause of ending mountaintop removal.

Geller and Evans bring us the unforgettable and spellbinding story of the troubled, divisive legacy of coal in Appalachia, and they connect the dots to the problems coal causes nationwide, including global warming. The film looks at the reality of mountaintop-removal coal mining, where companies blow off the tops of mountains to reach the coal beneath.

Some of the people you meet in the film are concerned about jobs and the economy, and they believe they're acting responsibly in bringing power to the nation's residents. The movie also features remarkable people whose families have lived in the region for generations, have loved and tended the land, and have mined the coal, and whose lives are now being torn apart, driven from their homes by pollution and blasting.

Sign up to be a host and you’ll also get the opportunity to receive a special message on the night of your house party from actress Ashley Judd, who has worked with the Sierra Club and other organizations to end mountaintop-removal coal mining.

We’ll send you the sneak preview DVD so you and your house party guests can witness the amazing stories of coalfield residents like Judy Bonds, whose life has been threatened numerous times due to her activism, and Chuck Nelson, who worked for decades as an underground miner before becoming a powerful voice for ending mountaintop removal. You and your guests can discuss the film, take action, and call in to hear a message from celebrity guests, Sierra Club leaders, and Appalachian community members featured in the film.

This film continues to become more important as we learn more about the realities of coal power. This week we saw the release of a National Research Council report on the external costs of energy -- focusing on “monetizing the damage of major air pollutants -- sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, and particulate matter -- on human health, grain crops and timber yields, buildings, and recreation.” They tallied up damages of an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, and the biggest contributor to that cost was coal, coming in with $62 billion of the tab. One wonders how much higher that number would be if it included the realities of mountaintop-removal coal mining.

More than 500 mountains have been leveled by this coal-mining practice, and more are under threat right now. Many of you reading this post are benefiting from the power generated by the coal mined using this practice -- but have no idea what's going on or the effect it is having on the Appalachian people, and in one of the world's most diverse ecosystems.

Won’t you take one evening to get together with friends and check out the sneak preview so that we can educate more people and finally put and end to the devastation of our mountain heritage?

P.S.: Remember our "Coal is Too Dirty for College" campaign? The second and third ads are out -- watch them here.

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Bill McKibben says time is running out on climate delays

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

This weekend marks the twentieth annual occurrence of a vaunted celebration you’ve quite possibly never heard of: the Environmental Media Association awards. The EMAs actually do a pretty good job of attracting A-list stars, or at least A-minus, and are the original “green-carpet” event. Each year, there are a handful of honorary awards (this year’s recipients include Richard Branson and Jason Mraz) and several others given in various film and TV categories. Sometimes it can feel like a stretch: for instance, while the nominating committee must have been thrilled with the documentary selections available to them this year—Fuel, Food, Inc., The Cove, No Impact Man—when it came to TV, they were reduced to choosing episodes of such knock-your-socks-off shows as Better Off Ted and ‘Til Death.

Yeah.

But it’s fun to add some glitz to green, and I tip my newsgirl cap to the EMA for the work it’s done on that front through all its efforts, including these awards. Apparently for twenty years! Who knew.

In search of a little context, I thought I’d see who else is celebrating a “platinum” anniversary this year—since Grist has made it to ten years (tin/aluminum!), why not look to our elders for wisdom. Turns out those commemorating their twentieth include such international heavyweights as the Goldman Prize and the U.N. Environment Program’s information office, known fondly as GRID-Arendal. They also include slightly lesser, but no less fascinating, eco-lights: the National Wetlands Awards, New York City environmental-justice and health organization WE-Act, NRDC’s Southern California office, Canadian grocery company Loblaw’s PC Green product line, and ... Turtle Independence Day!

Which can mean only one thing—it’s time to raise a glass, and it’s time to vote:

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

Here’s what we know so far

Here at Grist, we like to think of ourselves as trendspotters. And this is one trend we didn’t mind spotting: hot actresses are starting green websites left and right. With the launch of the most recent addition from Alicia Silverstone, we thought we’d take a peek at what lies beneath the glitz and glamour. Oh, and we figured we’d check out the websites, too.

Alicia Silverstone, thekindlife.com
Motto: “Sign up and spread the kind”
Mood: A chat with your spacy childhood friend
Worth a damn?: Too soon to tell

thekindlife.comSilverstone’s site, a cross-promotion for her book The Kind Diet, kicked off this week with a welcome video in which she describes her vision for a “blog-community thing” where she’ll give advice on the health and environmental considerations behind consumer choices. “I’m just trying to fill a need ... and I’m hoping that you’ll help me do that,” she says in this stoner-in-the-desert style confessional. Silverstone has made her eco-leanings public before, most notably through a naked PETA ad. And contrived as it may be, her presence here somehow feels authentic, as if you could write her a note (which people are starting to do) and she’d get right back to you (um, so far she’s not).

Gwyneth Paltrow, goop.com
Motto: “Nourish the inner aspect”
Mood: Spare and elegant, bordering on insufferable
Worth a damn?: Sure as Margo Tenenbaum smokes

Dominique Charriau/WireImage.comMuch has been made of this vanity website, in which Paltrow introduces marvelous, wonderful things into the lives of mere mortals. How you feel about it depends largely on how you feel about her, but we give props for the fact that it weaves in sustainability—almost naturally. Vegan recipes and recyclable socks nestle alongside accounts of taking weekend jaunts to London and getting fashion advice from Vanity Fair—you know, the stuff we all do when no one’s looking.

Tricia Helfer, triciagreen.com
Motto: “Chronicling the adventure of building a green, off-the-grid house”
Mood: Clouds and prairies and legs that go on forever
Worth a damn?: Good for a Cylon or solar fix

triciagreen.comUnlike the others on this list, Helfer—who’s either pervaded your every dream after her star turn in Battlestar Galactica or never blipped across your radar—hasn’t created a glitzy consumer site. Hers is actually an account of investigating the green options for a vacation home in her native Alberta, Canada. The quest may not garner many real-person points, but Helfer and her husband, a showbiz lawyer, manage to sound legitimately inquisitive and down to earth.

Rachel McAdams, greenissexy.org
Motto: “Tiny changes, big impact”
Mood: Bright and fun ... until you start reading
Worth a damn?: Eh, it’s a fine place to poke around for a while

Attit PatelThe Notebook beauty downplays her celebrity on this site, which she started with two friends when they realized that they were exchanging green “quips and tips” on a daily basis (and which now boasts a small slate of contributors). Her modesty is appealing, as is the green-lipstick kiss that graces every entry—but the writing is downright dull: “Hair dryers can really suck. Energy, that is.” A guide to taking action exhibits signs of life, and offers templates for writing to companies about their good (and bad) behavior, but to be true to its name, this site needs a little spark.

Julia Stiles, juliastilesstyles.com
Motto: “Helping the environment. You’re welcome.”
Mood: In your face, eco-poseurs
Worth a damn?: If you’re in a meta-mood

juliastilesstyles.comWe love a celebrity with a sense of humor, especially when it’s least expected. Which is why the eco-knockoff site created by Julia Stiles makes us just a little bit happy. The lippy actress deadpans her way through a video featuring her fashions, including a tie made from Swiffers and a shirt that doubles as pants, and then offers a “purchase” link that actually encourages visitors to donate to a food-rescue organization. Snark for a good cause? For some reason, that really resonates.

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

Grist catches up with The Yes Men—those high-minded pranksters behind the faux climate-week New York Post and the notorious SurvivaBall—to talk about runaway climate change, that Big Apple arrest, their plans for Copenhagen, and their latest movie, The Yes Men Fix the World, which comes out on October 7.

To get involved with The Yes Men in an effort they hope will be the largest international climate civil disobedience action of all time, visit www.beyondtalk.net.

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AP: Since 1997 “climate change has worsened and accelerated”

Here’s what we know so far

Two new documentaries show the damaging effects of the world's addiction to oil, each film from its own unique angle. Crude, which opened in New York on Sept. 9, traces the story of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 rural Ecuadorians against Chevron, which denies responsibility for turning their traditional rainforest home into a dumping ground for crude oil waste, sickening and killing generations of people. And Fuel, which opened in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 18, follows director Josh Tickell on his quest to convert the world to biofuels, eliminating the need for oil and thus -- hopefully -- for lawsuits like the one in Ecuador.

Oil pollutes the water sources of the Ecuadorians in Crude.Both films succeed in engaging viewers with compelling characters and stories -- from the chipper Tickell driving his sunflower-painted, biodiesel-fueled Veggie Van across the country, to the earnest and dogged Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo visiting the grave of his murdered brother. And both expose the utter stupidity and reality-denial of Big Oil, an industry unafraid to trample anything or anyone blocking its path to profit, even as the product still driving those profits grows ever more obviously obsolete.

"It's overly simplistic to say these are greedy companies who want to make money at all costs," Joe Berlinger, who directed Crude, told me on the phone the day after his film's New York release. (His previous work includes Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). "But there's an institutional blindness to the impact of their activities on other parts of the world."

In rural Ecuador, as in many other places off the radar of American consumers, that impact manifests itself in the form of communities that "have been systematically poisoned," as Trudie Styler (wife of Sting and co-founder of the Rainforest Foundation) put it in the film. Her involvement in and support of the case make up just one part of the starry journey that ultimately led to lawyer Fajardo being featured in Vanity Fair and giving a press conference at the Live Earth concert in New York in 2007.

"Pablo Fajardo walks into a room and just reeks of authenticity and heroism," Berlinger said of his film's central character. "This guy has this incredible story. [He] pulls himself up by the bootstraps, gets himself educated with the help of the Catholic church, because he's motivated to do something about the injustices that he saw as a young man working in those fields. I mean, you can't make this stuff up."

Fajardo's story infuses Crude with what Berlinger calls "the human element," something he thinks is often missing from the environmental movement. The passion and struggle of Fajardo and other characters -- like Maria Garofalo, whose 18-year-old daughter has to travel 18 hours to receive cancer treatments, which she can only afford by continuing to work in the fields -- embody the film's larger theme of environmental justice and oppression.

"It's kind of a wake-up call as to how we treat our indigenous people," Berlinger said. "We are eradicating the knowledge and the culture of people who have lived in harmony with nature for millennia, and we should be cherishing their view of consumption and interaction with nature as opposed to eliminating it."

Berlinger acknowledged that his film is a departure from the theme -- heard more loudly in environmental conversations -- of the effects of burning fossil fuels. "This is a film about the devastating effects of the procurement of those resources," he said. "Part of the debate about renewable energy should include, obviously, the impact of production on people and the environment."

Crude tells the story of those who suffer so we can get our oil fix. Fuel explores the ins and outs of that addiction, and promotes a solution that could kick the habit: biodiesel.

Fuel director Josh Tickell and his Veggie Van.Speaking through a sometimes-fuzzy cell phone as he crossed mountains in an algae-powered vehicle on his way to Reno, Fuel director Josh Tickell explained how, from its beginnings, "diesel was based in one concept, the nexus of efficiency and sustainability." Part of his film tells the story of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, whose values of social and economic justice sometimes went hand-in-hand with his engineering. His engine was created to run on vegetable oil, with the hope that this would "put power back in the hands of everyday farmers."

"This is the kind of engine we'd all be driving today had Diesel's engines been realized," Tickell said of his car, the Algaeus. But Rudolf Diesel disappeared mysteriously from a ship crossing the English Channel in 1913. Some suggest foul play on the part of competing business interests may have been involved.

Tickell remains remarkably upbeat about biofuels, despite the recent media backlash against them, which, he said, "decimated the biodiesel industry." His current tour across the country in a fleet of algae-powered vehicles focuses on dispersing information about biofuels and engaging politicians with that information.

"We're dissolving the barrier between this movement, which is largely an individualistic movement of personal choice, and what should be, needs to be, and will be a political movement," Tickell said. "We've got to get the environmentalists to get that we have allies in our local political leaders."

Tickell planned to meet with Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons in Reno, where Gibbons would pour a gallon of algae fuel into the Algaeus. A symbolic gesture, surely, but Fuel shows how it was an accumulation of such small steps that propelled biodiesel on its original path to popularity. Although he said he's "not going to hold [his] breath for Congress" to pass sweeping climate legislation, Tickell sees the tide turning toward renewable energy.

"We're in a time of tremendous sea change," he said. "The corporate concept of a triple bottom line -- incorporating sustainability and your ecological footprint into your product -- it's that triple bottom line that's guiding the next generation of energy companies."

Put together, Fuel and Crude offer a wide-ranging look at the vast, complex system of interests swirling in the orbit of one magnetically addictive resource. Rather than being disheartened by this intricacy, though, viewers can find inspiration in both films' stories of struggle and triumph. A goofy college graduate driving a van that smells like French fries can help spark a shift to a new kind of fuel -- and all of a sudden veteran truck drivers are filling their rigs with biodiesel and calling our dependence on foreign oil "a flat-ass shame." A man born into poverty in the Ecuadorian jungle can rise up as a leader for 30,000 of his people, who marvel at his picture in the pages of Vanity Fair. These struggles are far from over, but they're stories we need to hear. Both new films tell them with spirit and compassion.

Watch the trailer for Crude:

And for Fuel:

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Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash

What do Stephen Baldwin, the Pope, and the Environment Minister of the Netherlands have in common? They're all getting hot and bothered about climate change, and they were all at the premiere of Age of Stupid. (OK, the Pope sent a lackey, but he totally would have been there if he could.) Umbra Fisk surveys the scene, talking with Heather Graham, Moby, and others about the future of the planet.

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

We can't believe what's going on today either, Pete.Courtesy of The Age of Stupid

"Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?" asks the main character of Franny Armstrong's new film, The Age of Stupid. Living in a world of climate catastrophe, this solitary character, played by Oscar-nominee Pete Postlethwaite, serves as humanity's moral hindsight from the year 2055. He scans video archives of events unfolding between 2004 and 2008, shocked that the world at that time knew it was flushing its future down the drain. Humankind's stubborn refusal to act on climate compels him to dub contemporary times "the age of stupid."

Fortunately, we don't (yet) live in this climate-ravaged scenario of the future, and we have opportunities like The Age of Stupid to knock our thick skulls into action.

Before The Age of Stupid's U.S. premiere in New York City on September 21, director Franny Armstrong took a few minutes to chat with me about the film's part documentary, part back-to-the-future format; its scare-tactics approach; and what it's supposed to inspire (or depress) you to do:

Look for big names at the film's eco-premiere Monday, such as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, musicians Thom Yorke (Radiohead) and Moby, X Files actress Gillian Anderson, and our own Umbra Fisk, who will be appearing at -- if not walking down -- the green carpet that night. Check back here Tuesday for her video coverage. The live New York event and film screening will be simultaneously broadcast to 440 U.S. theaters Monday. However, if you don't catch The Age of Stupid at a local movie theater that night, you'll have to wait a while to see it on TV or DVD ... most likely after the Copenhagen international climate talks in December, and by then, Armstrong would argue, you'll likely be too late to have the most climate impact. Which would be stupid.

Synchronize your watches because The Age of Stupid film premiere is part of both the high-profile Climate Week NYC and the TckTckTck Campaign's Global Climate Wake-Up Call. Climate Week will see hundreds of world leaders in business and politics meeting in New York to address climate change in anticipation of the Copenhagen talks a mere seventy days away. The activist-organized Wake-Up Call is a day of rallies and actions to call on world leaders to commit to serious greenhouse gas reductions. Find (or organize) a Global Climate Wake-Up Call event near you on Monday, September 21.

The Age of Stupid looks to be an unforgiving examination of the actions (and inactions) of today, portending extreme consequences for mankind if it doesn't get its act together on climate. Will this film wake up the masses to the climate crisis or will its chilling predictions eventually be realized?

Watch the trailer and decide for yourself:

The Age of Stupid USA Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

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In the 1970s, just after the first Earth Day and in the midst of oil shortages, recessions, and uprisings by restless youth, politicians were suddenly expected to show concern for the environment. President Jimmy Carter went above and beyond by installing solar panels on the White House in 1979. Solar panels on the White House!

Seven years later, President Ronald Reagan took them down.

This mind-bogglingly idiotic reversal is chronicled in Robert Stone's new documentary Earth Days, about the history of the environmental movement. Seeing "history" and "environmental" in the same sentence probably makes you want to curl up for a 100-minute nap. But Earth Days, though it moves at a contemplative pace and contains less radical-protest/crunchy-commune footage than the hippie in me had hoped for, gives an absorbing overview of how the green movement got started, and why it ended up where it is today.

Featuring interviews with a who's who of influential environmentalists, Earth Days starts in postwar suburbia and describes the creeping sense of discontent some Americans began to feel in the midst of the nation's rapid economic growth. In this same era, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring to national acclaim, JFK assembled a panel of experts who confirmed that her science was sound, and, aided by the progressive policies of Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall (interviewed in the film), the environmental movement began to take shape. It meshed well with the idealism of nature-loving hippies. Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, a sort of Bible for early enviros, recounts in the film how his idea for the catalog came from an acid trip. The first image of the Earth from outer space became the icon of the catalog, and of the environmental movement as a whole.

Earth Days chronicles how groundbreaking, controversial writings like Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book The Population Bomb, which inspired Stephanie Mills' famous commencement address "The Future Is a Cruel Hoax," put environmental issues in the mainstream public's consciousness. The first Earth Day in 1970 was the largest national demonstration in United States history, with 20 million people across the nation voicing their concern for the environment. After that, environmentalists got seriously organized, taking their message into the political arena. In the span of just a few years, they helped push through the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other cornerstone environmental laws.

This burst of widespread concern and political action, as depicted in the film, is truly inspiring -- and what followed, a string of missed opportunities, is truly devastating. The gas shortages of the 1970s presented the perfect opportunity for a switch to renewable energy, but it didn't happen. Corporations started to catch on to the fact that environmental concerns could threaten their short-term profits. Reagan campaigned on the idea, perpetuated in part by the environmental movement itself, that a transition to a clean energy economy would be one of sacrifice. "They tell us we must learn to live with less," he declares indignantly in a campaign commercial shown in the film. After Reagan's election, greed became good again, the solar panels were stripped from the White House roof, and environmental destruction crept dangerously on.

"We lost 30 years, because both sides ossified into their ideologies," Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, said in the film. "If we've learned anything, it's that we're still in this together."

But Earth Days' portrayal of the past left me with a dark view of the future. It gave me the sense that because the leaders of previous generations wimped out, the planet's been desecrated past the point of salvation. As mentioned in the film, we're going the way of the Maya, the ancient Egyptians, and other civilizations that taxed their resources to the point of societal collapse -- except this time, ours is a global civilization that's killing itself, and taking the whole world with it.

Watch the trailer:

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Oct 24, 2009 - Not just a global day of action; a historic turning point

In November 2006, Michelle Conlin began a year-long experiment in extreme sustainability, resolving to burn no fossil fuels, produce no trash, and eat only food grown within 250 miles of her Greenwich Village home. She gave up nearly all shopping and learned to use cloth diapers for her 2-year-old daughter. She took up bicycling and rode a scooter to work. Describing her earlier self as “espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping” and a “take-out junkie,” she gave up coffee (with some lapses) and to-go food. Eventually she gave up electricity at home, relying on candles in her 9th-floor apartment and lots of stair climbing.

Michelle, Isabella, and Colin, still smiling.Photo courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories

Conlin, a 42-year-old reporter at Business Week, had no blog, book deal, or film project to send her on this journey of sacrifice and self-denial. What she had was a husband.

By fortune or misfortune, Conlin is married to Colin Beavan, the self-described No Impact Man. He cooked up the No Impact Man stunt as fodder for a book of the same name, out Sept. 1. He keeps a No Impact Man blog. And a film crew recorded his year for No Impact Man the movie, also released next month.

Beavan, 45, says he undertook the project to learn if his own lifestyle could become part of a solution to the world’s environmental crises. In writing about his motivation, he says he was afraid of becoming “that brand of liberal who whines about the world but doesn’t actually do anything about it.”

“If I were still a student, I’d probably march against my adult self,” he quips.

Hence, the bathtub full of laundry and the winter dinners of local cabbage. Also, because of the deforestation crisis, no toilet paper.

While Beavan gets all the attention and the superhero nickname, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Isabella, are dragged along for the un-motorized ride. That’s a good thing for the film, because Conlin emerges as the most vivid character for the simple reason that she struggles to make such drastic changes in her life.

Beavan, despite his claims that he was a do-nothing liberal, seems like he was just waiting for a reason to build a kitchen compost bin, mix up natural cleaning supplies, start buying groceries at the Union Square farmers market, etc, etc. The movie shows him reflecting on and defending the project, it shows him visibly losing weight over the year, but you don’t really see him struggle.

Conlin is more sympathetic because she misses coffee and tires of eating local root vegetables. She thinks, understandably, that a year is a long time to go without buying new clothes. While No Impact Husband devotes much of his day to cooking, cleaning, and making the experiment work, she keeps her day job. The filmmakers play up Conlin’s “espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping” characterization, but it’s still clear this is difficult for her.

The movie opens with Beavan backstage at The Colbert Report, practicing different ways of explaining his shtick. This is telling, as a lot of the movie is about the couple explaining the project. A New York Times profile about them serves as a plot development, because they’re shocked at how strongly and negatively readers react to their project.

“I didn’t quite get why people hated us,” says Conlin. She visits Eating Liberally blogger Kerry Trueman, who wrote a scathing post about No Impact Man before softening her view of the enterprise.

“This really touches a nerve for people,” Trueman says. “Aside from making people feel guilty and defensive about their consumer habits, people are very traumatized if you suggest that they should make do without something.”

Others weren’t angry but dismissive, leading Beavan to complain about the Times profile headline, “The Year Without Toilet Paper.”

Beavan holds Isabella at the Union Square Greenmarket. Photo courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories

“What if we called it the year I lost 20 pounds without going to the gym once?” he says. “Or the year we didn’t watch TV and became much better parents as a result? Or if we called it the year we ate locally and seasonally and it ended up reversing my wife’s pre-diabetic condition?”

But if the project is meant to get people talking—and Beavan says it is—it succeeded. Colbert, Good Morning America, and a slew of other media called to get his story. Sony/Columbia bought the right to rework the story as a drama that could, reportedly, include Will Smith. (Weird, I know.)

At some point toward the end of his project Beavan makes the discovery that he isn’t alone in working toward sustainability. He visits a project to reintroduce oysters in the Hudson River and an industrial cleanup project in the Bronx and says, “There is this network of people who have been working on this stuff forever.”

It shouldn’t have taken a year-long experiment to figure that out, but Beavan understands that the publicity gods reward stunts like No Impact Year. To my knowledge, the Bronx cleanup people haven’t been invited on Good Morning America.

Beavan undertook the project expecting that it would launch a more politically engaged stage in his career. (He has a Ph.D. in electronic engineering and wrote previous books about the history of forensics and D-Day.) After learning that 12,000 diesel trucks a day pass through the Bronx neighborhood he visited, he reports, “The diesel particulates in the air are causing asthma in kids, causing brain damage in kids … I’m not talking about the polar bears, I’m not talking about people in faraway island communities who are going to be hurt when the ocean levels rise. I’m talking about people who are already feeling the effects of our over-consumptive society.”

I hope his work keeps moving in this direction. In explaining why he flipped off his apartment’s circuit breakers earlier in the film, he says, “I can’t change the way that electricity is delivered to my house.” I wanted to tell him that a lot of engineers, activists, and citizens are working hard because of their conviction that—together--they can change where electricity comes from.

He seems to sense this when he installs a rooftop solar panel and says, “For the first time I’ve realized that it’s not about using as little as I can possibly use, but finding a way to get what I need in a sustainable way.”

It might be an artificial revelation at the end of a patently artificial “experiment.” Then again, even Thoreau’s shack at Walden Pond was a stunt, with a book deal always in mind. Walden proved both deeply irritating and useful to those who were unsettled by it. No Impact Man (the movie) inhabits that tradition well.

One more note: It’s a thoroughly fun movie to watch, with great music. Watching Beavan reading Gawker comments about himself gives a sense of how hard it can be to dramatize a story about not doing things. But filmmakers Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein make the most of the Manhattan setting, using traffic jams, overflowing trash cans, and belching exhaust pipes as foils to Beavan and Conlin’s clean living. They got into the no-impact spirit, shooting from a bicycle rickshaw while filming the couple on their bikes.

Find out when the movie is coming to your city, and watch the trailer:

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This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

A Penny Saved Is…

You never get a second chance to make No Impact—oh wait, yes you do

We'll be brief
Want to change the world? Start with your underwear.

Hoofin' it
Forget gasoline, veggie oil, and electric plugs. When it comes to ecofriendly travel, all you need is horse power. Giddy up!

Frosty, we only have eyes for you
My family supported coal and all I got was this lousy coloring book (and an asthma inhaler).

Nature = nurture
"Maintaining a connection to nature, either through the presence of indoor plants or artwork depicting the natural environment, has been shown to ... make us better people." People who don't know what actually constitutes "nature."

Horror show
The Cove: It's Whale Wars meets Oceans Eleven meets, well, actual oceans. Dive in ... if you dare.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

The Cove documents a the hunting of dolphins in one Japanese fishing village.Early on in The Cove, director Louie Psihoyos describes how he assembled an "Ocean's Eleven"-like team of specialists to infiltrate and expose a secret, brutal, for-profit dolphin-killing operation in Japan.

The description fits the film, which is structured more like an action thriller than a documentary. And the team, which includes a pair of world-class free divers, a "clandestine operations" specialist who's discovered Caribbean shipwrecks, a rock concert organizer, and a spiritual surfer dude who co-founded Surfers for Cetaceans. (Cetacea, for marine-illiterate folk, is the order of marine mammals that includes dolphins, whales, and porpoises.)

The Cove documents the work of Ric O'Barry, who in a previous life spent 10 years as a dolphin trainer, most famously for the 1960s TV series Flipper, only to renounce that work and dedicate himself to fighting the dolphin captivity industry. O'Barry's heartbreaking devotion to these highly intelligent mammals, and his deep guilt over Flipper's popularization of trained dolphin shows, form the emotional backbone of film.

O'Barry has been a fly in the ointment to the Japanese coastal town of Taiji for some time now, attracting hostility from the locals for his determination to stop its industry of dolphin capture and slaughter. A classic example of an inspiring breed of activist -- i.e. someone who started on the other side before a crisis of conscience turned him -- O'Barry is unafraid to cross the line in pursuit of his goals. When asked "How many times have you been arrested?" he responded, "This year?"

The movie's unique storytelling style -- a far cry from the academic talking heads and dire government statistics that suffocate most enviro docs -- has earned The Cove much well-deserved critical acclaim already. Night-vision footage of Psihoyos' badass team of eco-guerrillas sneaking into an isolated cove to plant high-def cameras, not to mention the literal bloodbath those cameras recorded, is compelling enough to keep mainstream audiences engaged. For that reason, The Cove serves as a model of how documentaries can stay relevant in today's fast-paced media culture.

Louie Psihoyos directed The Cove.Despite its nail-biting action, effortless pacing, and gruesomely engaging subject matter, The Cove ultimately commits one of the greatest enviro-activist sins: it is, in essence, just another save-the-cute-animals plea. Killing dolphins and then serving the mercury-tainted meat to Japanese schoolchildren is disgusting and immoral. Capturing dolphins and teaching them silly tricks does a great disservice to both them and the human race, which probably has a lot to learn from these skilled communicators. And Japan's continued shirking of international whaling regulations should not be tolerated.

But The Cove gets so caught up in the thrilling suspense of its own story that it neglects to hammer these points home hard enough, allowing O'Barry to toss most of them off without backup from other sources. And when the film ended, in my most cynical heart of hearts, I still had not been convinced of why this atrocity should matter to me personally. The Cove relies on its own shock value and misses an opportunity for a deeper exploration of why this baffling practice occurs, and of what other communities have to learn from it.

What I found more resonant than Taiji's dolphin cruelties was the film's footage from an International Whaling Commission meeting, which revealed the twisted political alliances and back-door dealings that often define international summits. Japan buys off tiny, impoverished nations like Dominica, St. Kitts, and the Marshall Islands, plying them with expensive building projects in exchange for backing for Japan's continued violation of IWC regulations. The sense that this official bribery is a practice not unique to Japan calls into question whether international policymaking bodies can be forces for positive change in the world.

This depressing realization casts a cloud over the The Cove, and, for that matter, the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen. After all, what does the work of people like O'Barry matter if, in the end, everyone's fate is decided by cold-hearted, suit-wearing bureaucrats, who, behind the closed doors of conference rooms, trade our futures for a few bucks?

Go See It: Where you can see The Cove

Other Reviews: N.Y. Times | L.A. Times | The Washington Post

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Our planet's supply of safe drinking water is rapidly diminishing. We have reached peak oil (according to some experts). The polar ice caps are melting, causing sea levels to rise and threatening coastal areas and island nations everywhere.

The Great Squeeze, a documentary by director Christophe Fauchere (of 2007's film Energy Crossroads), is full of such apocalyptic observations, none of which should surprise anyone even vaguely environmentally minded.

The film is polished and put-together, chock-full of interviews with various professors and experts, and features powerful footage of displaced typhoon victims and third-world children picking through trash heaps. The problem with The Great Squeeze is that its subject matter is too broad, and its format and delivery are not unique enough to reach the legions of uninformed citizens who most need to hear what it has to say. Those of us inclined to pick up a documentary with the vague subtitle "Surviving the Human Project" are probably already on board with efforts to create a sustainable future. We don't need more swelling, ominous music, staggering world population statistics, or haunting shots of belching oil refineries to convince us.

The Great Squeeze made some brief but interesting observations that I wish had been explored more deeply. It discussed the modern concept of progress, which has only barely begun to shift away from being defined by levels of consumption and convenience -- barometers that developing countries have been monitoring for decades in an effort to emulate the American lifestyle. The film also touched on the fact that Americans have lost "the tragic sense of life" -- that is, that our expectation of instant gratification has wiped away the truth that life contains loss as well as consumption, hard times as well as happy times, and that often pain and sacrifice are required of us before we can move to a better place.

For those balking at the idea of transforming our economy into a clean, green one, this is the message they need to hear. But I fear that The Great Squeeze, like so much environmental advocacy journalism before it, drowns this point with too many familiar images of bleached coral reefs and paddling polar bears. It's no surprise to learn, then, that the production company, Tiroir a Films, is working hard to market the film to the academic community, where Energy Crossroads enjoyed some success, according independent producer Joyce Johnson.

Film Notes: The Great Squeeze was released in March. It won Best Long-Form Documentary at the Festival de Cine Ecologico y de la Naturaleza de Canarias (Spain) 2009. The producers are hoping to sign a broadcast deal with an independent channel and are focusing on distributing a version of the film tailored for academic settings. You can order a copy online.

Watch the film's trailer:

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Most of the pieces in this series focus on individual artists or one-off works. But climate art is gaining an institutional foothold too. Check out our tour of green museums -- and read on for more examples of groups taking a broader look at climate through art.

Founded in 2001 by artist David Buckland, Cape Farewell aims to "pioneer the cultural response to climate change." The international charitable organization does this by bringing artists, scientists, and communicators together to inspire the creation of art that is rooted in scientific research.
This piece made from steel, glass, water, and salt is part of the "Earth: Art of a Changing World" exhibit opening at London's Royal Academy of Arts in December. Click here to see a preview of this exhibit.Mariele Neudecker, 400 Thousand Generations, 2009
A recent project involved an 18-day trek through Peru's shrinking glaciers and rain forests, during which artists visited multiple science stations. After the trip, the art they produce will become part of ongoing exhibitions and engagement programs.

In December, Buckland will help curate "Earth: Art of a Changing World," an exhibit at London's Royal Academy of Arts that will feature works from more than 30 contemporary artists. See a preview of the exhibit in this slideshow.

Art-history types are taking note of climate change as well, both in terms of concern over how rising temperatures and humidity could affect art treasures in tropical nations and in the development of new fields of study, such as "ecocriticism."

The most recent edition of the American Art journal features an essay on the topic of "ecocritical art history" that defines the term as "emphasiz[ing] issues of environmental interconnectedness, sustainability, and justice in cultural interpretation." And although author Alan C. Braddock comments first on a Thomas Eakins painting from the late 1800s, he goes on to note [PDF] that "glimpses of climate change increasingly appear in contemporary art" and points to the Arctic photography of Subhankar Banerjee as an example.

Braddock also chose to put one of Banerjee's photographs of caribou migration on the cover of his forthcoming collection of essays, A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History.

Need more evidence that the climate crisis is creeping deeper into our cultural consciousness? Check out these climate-related stories we dug out of the Grist archives:

Visual Art
Images of an evolving world by artist Don Simon
Burning Embers design contest seeks new ways to illustrate climate change

Film
A review of Fields of Fuel
A second look at Fields of Fuel
Wangari Maathai film shows Kenyan tree planting as political subversion
The Next Wave chronicles the climate change refugees
Sweet Crude documents oil exploitation in the Niger River Delta
Sea Change documentary highlights threats of ocean acidification
Big Coal does not want you to see Coal Country film
An interview with climate mockumentary filmmaker Randy Olson

Music
Music festivals across the country aim to lessen their footprint
Legendary Burning Man festival gets an eco-conscience
Barenaked Ladies vocalist Steven Page lays bare his hopes for a green future
Moby reflects on his new "best of" album and his not-so-new social activism
Reggae artist Michael Franti lets loose on inspiring social change
Mike D of the Beastie Boys drops science on green tours, politics, and Live Earth
The barnstorming band that's changing the world, one campus at a time
Russell Simmons on harnessing the power of hip-hop to change the world
Nine things you should know about musician Andrew Bird
Jason Mraz sings the praises of a simpler life
Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard chats about the band's environmental ethos
Tom Gray on green touring, Wal-Mart, and why he won't proselytize

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Only about a fifth of the plastic water bottles purchased in the United States are recycled.Courtesy producers of TAPPED.Tapped, a new documentary about the bottled water industry from director Stephanie Soechtig and the producers of Who Killed the Electric Car?, is a pretty damning look at how consumers have been tricked into spending too much money on water packaged in plastic and quite often not as clean as what's available from the faucet.

I knew bottled water sucks, but I didn't know it sucks this much. Not only is it a clear waste of resources (only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch), it's an incredible waste of money for consumers, who pay more than the price of gasoline for water that's marketed as "pure," but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water. (In fact, 40 percent of the time, bottled water is nothing but municipal tap water, freed from the government oversight that keeps it safe.)

Tapped, which began a one-week run at the IFC Center in New York on Friday, traces the evolution of bottled water from its hoity-toity Perrier days to its present ubiquity, and succeeds at making the industry reps look like total jerks. A few too many mid-interview cutaways to Soechtig looking concerned came off as a little journalistically self-important, but Tapped does a solid job of covering every aspect of this damaging industry and inspiring more outrage than despair. It features interviews with the likes of Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin and Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), not to mention some footage of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) tearing into an FDA rep at a government hearing.

I will never look at bottled water with anything less than loathing from now on.

Watch the trailer:

The film's website lists where you can see it in the theater. So far, it will be screened in a smattering of cities on the East and West costs. There's also a Facebook page for the film.

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Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Dutch treat
Forget cow-tipping. Dutch pranksters are all about car-tipping these days, dumping dozens of lightweight Smart cars into Amsterdam's canals. What tossers!

Image created by The Sun

Keep on truckin'
Giving the Weinermobile (R.I.P. Oscar) a run for its money, the Truck Farm is a CSA on wheels. Talk about teaching an old Dodge new tricks!

Cloudy with a chance of ice cream
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream that teaches us about climate change and emerging nanotechnology.

Monkey business
Guard your gardenias, folks, seems guerilla gorilla gardening is on the rise.

Take that, Once-ler!
He is the Lorax; he speaks for the trees. And soon he'll be doing it in animated 3-D.

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General Motors to start repaying government loans

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Getting trashed
Dumpster diving, as defined by a hippie: dinner. Dumpster diving, as defined by a hipster: exclusive urban swimming hole.

Photo: diegofuego via Flickr

Streak of genius
Well, that's one way to get your message across ... but can you really call yourself a streaker if there's no meat involved?

Photo: The Lab via FlickrLook out below!
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a coal shill!

Leave it to Beavan
First Colin Beavan had a blog, then a book, and now a movie. Does that still count as having "no impact"?

Just dance
Choreographed dance routines: our greatest weapon in the fight against climate change.

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Martha Stewart blisters meat industry in Thanksgiving show

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer's extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited "Coal Country" film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theaters next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive.

And Big Coal ain't happy.

Here's the trailer:

After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its Friends of Coal sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11, 7pm, at La Belle Theater in the South Charleston Museum in Charleston, West Virginia.

Why is Big Coal so afeared of this documentary film by native Appalachian daughters Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, producer and director of three-part award-winning landmark PBS series, "The Appalachians"?

If anything, Coal Country goes out of its way to include the views and voices of the Big Coal lobby and its executives, engineers and miners. This, in fact, might be why Coal Country is so compelling; far from any hackneyed agenda, Coal Country simply allows the coal industry and those affected by its mountaintop removal operations and coal-fired plants to tell their personal stories. The end result is devastating. In a methodical and deliberate fashion, Coal Country brilliantly takes viewers on a rare journey through our nation's coal-fired electricity, from the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of coal.

Once you see the breathtaking footage by cameraman Jordan Freeman, and the unaffected and heart-rending portraits of coal mining families, you will never flick on your light switch again without thinking about Coal Country.

From the git-go, West Virginia governor and coal peddler Joe Manchin declares: "There is no replacement for coal. There might be 30 or 50 or 100 years from now, but there's not today."

A French engineer cheerfully proclaims, "Coal is a wonderful resource. It's too bad it's dirty."

As one coal company executive coldly states, the millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives that rip through the Appalachian mountains and poison the watersheds and air of local communities daily, "might make some people uncomfortable."

Another coal engineer playfully recalls teaching his children to refer to coal-fired plants as "cloud factories" to bring the rain, in the face of some of the highest cancer and heart disease rates in the country, and an American Lung Association study that 24,000 Americans die prematurely from coal-fired plant pollution each year.

One reclamation engineer even breaks into tears, lamenting that his dedication and work are misunderstood. He waves his hand at denuded hills, stripped of the hundreds of species of flora and fauna in one of the most diverse deciduous forests on the American continent, and lauds his planting of a small stand of sycamores. After 30 years of reclamation laws and over 1.5 million acres of clear cut and destroyed hardwood forest, he champions the novelty of his tree-planting efforts: "We're trying them out on some mountaintop removal sites and seeing how they do."

Whew. Big Coal doesn't want you to see this stunning expose because they have been allowed to let the truth slip out of their mouths.

Michael Shnayerson, the author of Coal River, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonderfully plays the role of an informative commentator throughout the film, delivering his facts in a no-nonsense and quiet manner. Yet, he tells an interviewer: "Nothing prepared me for the visual devastation..." of mountaintop removal.

And this is where Coal Country shines the light on one of the darkest human rights and environmental violations overseen by federal and state regulators in our times. Through a series of moving portraits of coalfield residents, the film chronicles the extraordinary and largely overlooked toll of coal mining on the lives of Appalachian residents.

In a gripping montage, Coal Country shows how those affected by mountaintop removal and coal-fired plants have emerged as the most informed and articulate spokespeople against the ravages of the out-of-state coal companies. In effect, it is the gross indifference and recklessness of Big Coal that turns former coal miners and farmers and shopkeepers into the nation's leading coal and climate change activists--and true American heroes.

One of the film's most illuminating moments takes place during a hearing in West Virginia over the Bush administration's 2002 manipulation of the stream buffer rule, which allowed mining waste to be dumped into mountain streams. While a line of residents and coal company employees take their turn at the microphone, the room silences when a young man in a halting voice steps up and quietly tells the truth:

"Both sides are scared. And we're screaming insults back and forth at each other, and I think we're losing sight of the source of our fears. West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, and southern West Virginia is the poorest part of it. And I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping burgers. You look out and that's all you see. Mining and flipping burgers. And I argue that the coal company, that they want it that way. That they want that to be the only options. That is the only way they can get support on the way they treat their workers and treat our community."

In Rock Creek, West Virginia, Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds recounts the polarization and poisoning of the community's watersheds. She quotes Upton Sinclair: "It is hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck demands him not to understand."

In eastern Kentucky, Teri Blanton describes the devastated woodlands landscape replanted with foreign grass, "which is fine for Montana, but it's not supposed to look like that in eastern Kentucky."

Former coal miner Chuck Nelson walks viewers through the union-busting tactics of out-of-state coal companies and mountaintop removal operations, and the rarely noticed destruction of real estate values for local coalfield residences due to coal dust and environmental ruin. Mountaintop removal, ultimately, he points out, "is not so cheap for people who have to live under these sites."

In southwestern Virginia, Kathy Selvage describes how she went from too shy to speak in public, to her transformation as one of the most articulate activists and well-researched coal experts. Far from being politically motivated, it comes down to an "assault on our community and way of life." Standing in the face of a pitiful reclamation efforts, she declares, "I grieve over the lost of a mountain."

Farmer Elisa Young in Meigs County, Ohio, tours the parade of coal-fired plants along the Ohio River that have led to the highest cancer and poverty rates in the region. "I'm not a trained activist, I'm not an environmentalist. I just live in a county that is being waled on...As a farmer, I need clean air, clean soil and clean water to run a farm."

With some spectacular photography in the background during a flyover across mountaintop removal sites, Kathy Mattea, the wondrous West Virginia country music star and granddaughter of coal miners, speaks of her support of coal mining families and the region's dilemma.

Mattea nails the issue of mountaintop removal: "It's not against the law," she says, "but what if a law is unjust?"

Coal Country should be required viewing for our nation's elected officials, and the administrators at the Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA and the Department of Interior.

In fact, Coal Country needs to be screened at the White House theatre.

For more information, visit the Sierra Club or the Coal Country film site.

Info on the West Virginia premiere is here.

A book companion, Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal, will be released this fall, and edited by Silas House, Shirley Stewart Burns, and Mari-Lynn Evans.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

In prepping for today's House debate on Waxman-Markey, I watched a film. (No, not An Inconvenient Truth.)

It was David Mamet's mindbender, The Spanish Prisoner. The movie takes its title from a venerable long-con so complicated that -- I don't care how many times you've seen the film -- twenty minutes in and you'll have no idea who's zoomin' who.

It's the perfect choice, and not just because politics at this level is always part confidence game (with you and me cast as the mark). The movie works so well in part because opponents of the climate bill have their very own Spaniard. And, just as in the film, this guy is no prisoner. He's part of the con.

Meet Gabriel Calzada. George Will (no stranger to con games, himself) introduced him anew in a column yesterday as "The Spanish Professor."

You'll have to listen carefully, though, because key Republicans (Marsha Blackburn, TN, for example) are likely to use code, dropping oblique references to "the report from Spain." (See p. 434.)

As an indignantly redundant Ed Whitebield (R-KY) described Calzada's work, the "empirical study" uses "empirical data" to prove that for every "so-called green job" created in Spain under a cap-and-trade regime identical to Waxman-Markey, 2.2 good jobs were lost.

And that's the good news.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) says that the Spanish Prisoner Professor's study found we could lose 20 "regular" jobs (see pp. 442-3) for every green one created by the climate bill.

Scary stuff. In fact, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) says that after talking with Calzada, the climate bill now scares him more than the 9/11 terror attacks:

"[Calzada] said, America, are you crazy?We have got 17.5 percent unemployment in Spain, and you want to model your aspects [sic] after us? You have got to be kidding me...this debate is so crazy!"

The GOP fearmongers would have me scared, too, if I didn't know how this con game worked.

Let's start with el profesor Calzada himself, who according to a recent piece in the Washington Times, hails from "one of Spain's leading universities."

Is it:

a) The University of Salamanca, established in 1218;

b) The University of Navarra, regarded as the best private university in Spain; or,

c) The University of Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid campus, now celebrating its 10th anniversary.

If you guessed "C" you're right! (Although, URJC has yet to make it on any top 10, 100, or 250 lists of Spanish universities.)

OK, it may not be the most prestigous University in the world (or Spain or Madrid), but Calzada has a wonderful record that stretches back, um, a decade, when he earned his PhD. in economics from URJC, where he is now an Associate Professor of Economics.

Perhaps Calzada has been widely published? Strong but wrong. His school website lists only two obscure and fringy journals, "The Journal of Libertarian Studies" and something called "Economic Affairs y Procesos de Mercado," for which Calzada may also serve as "assistant manager (subdirector)."

As a final accolade, the site boasts that Calzada "has been economic advisor to several companies in the tourism industry."

What's left out is Calzada's links to several right-wing groups that claim global warming is a hoax.

This is the man Republican leaders cite most frequently to support their bogus claim that Waxman-Markey will lead to the destruction of millions of jobs in the United States.

They're wrapping things up in the House. After listening to the Republican whiners for several hours (I can't find my copy of the bill! You have so not proved global warming!), I'm ready to kick back and watch another film.

The bill is going to move over to the Senate, so I better make sure I keep my edge on Republican tactics. Anyone know where I can get my hands on a copy of the 1990 John Cusack classic, The Grifters?

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