Rigoberta Menchú, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the rights of indigenous people and resistance to military oppression in Guatemala.

She spoke recently about the disproportionate effects of global warming on the people of developing countries.  She fears that when water supplies are depleted, rich countries will use desalination and try to sell the water back to poor at a price they can’t afford  A Treehugger blogger who was in the audience wrote, “A focus on nature will come with a focus on one another and the common good we must achieve. Fixing the planet goes hand in hand with fixing ourselves.”

The winning Climate Matters video. Shot in Glacier National Park, the one-minute piece is cinematic and lush — and has that irresistible element: a wise child.*

Filmmaker Steve Dempsey told the NYT’s Andrew Revkin:

It’s so easy to become complacent about the wonders of nature so, instead of showing the problem, I wanted to show people what we have to lose instead. It’s based on the old adage, “You don’t really know what you have until it’s gone.” I think the problem of climate change is self evident after that. I also included my daughter Tara looking at the viewer and she also did the narrative. I wanted this piece to be the voice of a young generation because they are the people we need to be fighting for today.

Congratulations to Steven and Tara! Beautiful work.

* Don’t think I didn’t try to cram in as many adorable kids as possible in my (disqualified) entry!

Today’s New York Times has an article about people who approach sustainable living like an extreme sport.  This is way beyond compact fluorescents.  Are they “dark green” environmental heroes — or “energy anorexics” who are officially obsessed with carbon dieting?  I’d say a little of both.

Some of the ways they live über-green lives…

• Super-minimal driving, including not letting one child join a baseball team because the closest practice is too far from their home
• Unplugging the fridge and using it as an icebox in the summer (cooled with frozen jugs of water) and storing perishables outside in the winter
• Homemade composting toilet
• Scything the lawn instead of using an electric- or gas-powered mower
• Wood stove as heater (for an average indoor temperature in the winter of 52 degrees!)
• Running the car on used cooking oil from a local restaurant
• Occasionally peeing on the lawn to “save a flush”*

One guy, David Chameides (pictured above), is archving a year’s worth of his household waste in his basement and blogging about it.

Colin Beavan known as “No Impact Man,” is on an extended experiment with his wife, toddler and child, in living with no net impact on the planet.  That means no waste, no carbon emissions, no public transportation, nothing, and for the necessary electricity (needed to maintain his blog, presumably), he’s offsetting in a number of ways.

* I’ve come to really dislike flushing the toilet and since I don’t have a backyard (and my neighbors would be rather alarmed to see me poppin’ a squat on the fire escape), I try to flush only every 3 times I use the toilet.  That for Number Two.  For Number One, I splurge and flush away!

Ten-year-old climate activist Nikos Spiridakis created this ad for 1Sky.  Supporters of the campaign put it on the air in 14 battleground states during the last presidential debate.  If they raise another $10,000 they can put it on again on the final debate on Wednesday.

I’m struck by how strongly many teenagers and children feel about the climate crisis.*

When I was growing up, we heard about global warming, but it wasn’t a cultural and political touchstone and, moreover, it wasn’t real.  Winters in St. Paul, MN, were still damn cold.  My parents never had to tell me we wouldn’t be driving to Chicago to visit our family because of gas prices.  I never saw an American city underwater.  Polar bears were merely cute, not symbols of environmental destruction.**

I’ve been trying to get in their heads, these people just 10 or 15 years younger than me, and understand it as they do.  One of the things I liken it to is the AIDS epidemic.  In the late ’80s and early ’90s, when I was around 8 to 10 years old, it was on TV, in health class, in plays that we saw on field trips.  I remember being anxious about this awful disease, but it didn’t seem like there was anything I could do about it except, someday, “practice safe sex” (gross!).

Later, in high school, I got fired up about sweatshops in developing countries.  The injustice struck a chord: girls and boys, unable to go to school, working under unfair conditions to make the clothes that ended up in my local mall.  I taught about them in schools around the Twin Cities and traveled to Nicaragua to shoot interviews with girls who worked in maquiladoras.

I feared AIDS in a very abstract way.  It was long before I was in any danger of contracting it, and by the time I was, it wasn’t a “crisis” anymore.  I cared passionately about putting an end to sweatshops.  But neither of these issues signalled a possible apocalypse….

* Examples: A 2005 study in the UK found that climate change is the biggest concern among schoolchildren.  Eight-year-old schoolkids in Washington, DC, are, according to their parents, obsessed with dying polar bears.  There are kid-led organizations such as Cool Kids for a Cool Climate and It’s Getting Hot in Here.

For personal perspectives, check out “Climate Change Through Children’s Eyes” these Climate Matters videos, “The Walk Home” and “Ask the Children.”

** Although I wasn’t particularly worried, there were some young people in the 1990s who were.  In particular, Severn Suzuki, who at age 9 co-founded the Environmental Children’s Organization.  Three years later, she addressed the 1992’s UN Earth Summit.  It’s an extraordinary clip.

Van Jones’ book is out today. I’ve written about him here and here.

Al Gore said:

This book illustrates the link between the struggle to restore the environment and the need to revive the US economy. Van Jones demonstrates conclusively that the best solutions for the survivability of our planet are also the best solutions for everyday Americans.

A band on tour has a pretty nasty carbon footprint.  There’s the gas burned up by their tour bus(es) or van, the industrial-farmed junk food they scarf down on the road, and the plastic beverage bottles they trash in dressing room garbage bins, not to mention the non-biodegradable needles and wasted groupies left backstage.

Over the past few years, a number of major acts have joined in the fight against climate change, lending their marquee names and donating a portion of their profits to environmental campaigns and organizations.

But I’m often more inspired by smaller-scale efforts, the kind of action that can be a part of our everyday lives. To borrow some terminology from Malcolm Gladwell, musicians, particularly cult favorites, are the influencers who are crucial to pushing a fringe “trend” to the tipping point, when it’s adopted by a mainstream population.

With that in mind, check out this video from The Duhks, a Grammy-nominated, bluesy, folksy, country-rock group from Canada that spends 70% of the time on the road (with hat-tip to Mother Jones).  The band’s environmentally-conscious approach to music-making and music-selling, which they’ve dubbed the Green Duhks Sustainability Project, is a combination of the basic stuff a lot of us are doing, as well as some things that are specific to the industry:

• Running the tour bus on biofuel
• Recycling
• Using eco-friendly toiletries
• Using reusable water bottles
• Eating local, farm-raised produce
• Offsetting some carbon emissions by purchasing credits
• Selling “eco-friendly” band merchandise, including CD packaging and concert apparel
• “Partnering” with a handful of environmental organizations
• Raising awareness through their lyrics, website, and this music video, for their song “Fast Paced World”

On a personal  note, one sun-drenched shot in this video filled me with happy nostalgia: the woman driving, her left leg sitting comfortably in the groove where the dashboard meets the windshield (at 2:20).  I certainly don’t miss owning a car, but I’ve got to admit, there’s nothing like that feeling of ease on the open road.  I look forward to the day when we can take trips like that with our electric cars equipped with long-lasting batteries and charged with electricity from renewable sources.