A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of meeting Ben, Julie, and Mark, three intrepid souls who have spent the last 10 months traveling around the United States and covering positive environmental stories as documented on their website, Your Environmental Road Trip. By July 4, 2008, they will have visited all 50 states! The culmination of their work will be a feature-length documentary about their travels and the amazing people and projects they encountered along the way, along with a short video for each state.

I met them at a party in Brooklyn the weekend before Earth Day, which they elected to spend in New York City. Over hummus and peanut butter brownies, we got to know each other and spent several watery early spring hours talking about everything from my brother and sister-in-law’s restaurant (where Ben has eaten—small world!) to permaculture in Tennessee (where we also had mutual friends) to pioneers in Idaho who put the rest of us to shame by living in warm, well-appointed and comfortable caves.

Mark, Ben, and Julie impressed me not only with their stamina and determination, but also with their outlook, which is very Sunny Way-esque. With their combination of hilarity, positivity, and realism, they are spreading the good news that we can make a better future and in fact already are!

I can’t wait to see their documentary! In the meantime, have some fun watching their short videos and reading their blog entries.

A little light entertainment as we head into the weekend. Happy sunshine-bottling gnomes battle gloomy swamp-dwellers in this cartoon from 1935. (via Fed by Birds)

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Earth Day 2008 started out promisingly enough. I sit on the recycling committee at the giant corporation I work for (of course I do!), and we arranged to get some sweet freebie travel mugs to give to our colleagues, to encourage them to use fewer paper cups in the office.

We set up a table outside the cafeteria and handed out about a thousand of them, and people were jazzed. What a great idea! we heard over and over again. By the time lunch was over, we were almost out of mugs, and patting ourselves on the back.

We also set up a screening of The 11th Hour, which I hadn’t seen at that point. And, flying high from the talk I’d given the previous week which had ended with a truly wonderful conversation, I’d volunteered to facilitate a discussion after the screening. The CEO’s office even kicked in some free soda and popcorn for attendees. We were pumped for another great event.

So ... 5 pm. Screening time. About 15 people showed up, less than half the number that had RSVPed, but that’s to be expected. No biggie. I warmly welcomed everyone and invited them to stay afterwards to talk about the film, then we settled into our seats and the lights went down.

An hour into the film, I was wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. The first 2/3 of this movie are seriously depressing. How was I going to put a Sunny Way spin on 60 relentless minutes of how screwed we are?

The last 30 minutes throw the viewer a small bone of hope, but seriously? The proportions are all wrong. Leonardo DiCaprio and friends go into a lot of detail on the problems, but just sort of breeze through the solutions, almost as though they are an afterthought.

I suppose I should have been grateful the doom-and-gloom hour came first! Imagine the mood in the room if they’d ended with the falling sky stuff. We would have had to hand out cyanide instead of popcorn.

Anyway. The film ended with a rousing Coldplay tune, the credits rolled, and the lights went up. Discussion time. Things started out innocuously enough: What did you like about this film?

One nice man, the leader of our recycling committee, said he liked the feeling of optimism and possibility at the end. I nodded enthusiastically. Yes, I said. It’s important to stay positive, because who does anything when they feel overwhelmed and depressed? Others in the group murmured their agreement. It’s up to all of us.

At that point, another gentleman jumped in with a torrent of sentences. They should have done a lot more about cars, America was built on the automobile and it was great, at least until unions ruined it. I blinked a few times, then buckled down to talk a bit with him about all that. Pretty soon I was on the history of transportation in the U.S. and he was on how everything comes down to no one disciplining their children anymore.

Twenty minutes or so later, I was not at all sure what was happening, but I knew it was not the positive, proactive conversation I’d been hoping for.

Then, another man got up to leave. He hadn’t said a word, but he stopped by my chair, looked me in the eye, and told me, “I really appreciate you doing this. I have to say, though, I think it’s too late. We don’t have a prayer.”

Stunned, confused, and frustrated, I turned to him and said, “All due respect and everything, sir? That is a cop-out.” His resigned expression didn’t change. He simply shrugged and walked out.

Another guy nodded in agreement with him. So did my union-busting, car-loving, red-blooded American debate partner. I could feel my color rising, so I wrapped things up, thanked everyone for coming, and bolted.

On the subway home, I broke down in tears. How can people be so closed-minded? I wrote wildly in my journal. So deaf to anything other than the sound of their own voices? How are we ever going to get anywhere?

And at that moment, the enormity of the situation rose up before me like a massive concrete wall, so high I couldn’t see the top, so smooth and monolithic I couldn’t see a way to climb it.

Now before you start wondering about my mental health, let me make sure I am clear on this: I am not kidding about what it says at the top of this web page. I am dedicated to this cause with every cell in my body and every thought in my head. This project—creating a context of possibility, encouraging everyone to take part, making responsibility the rule rather than the exception—is the purpose of my life. And it’s not like I think it’s going to be easy. I know the task before us is HUGE.

But we all live in the bubble of our own experience, and my experience is usually filled with people who think a lot like I do. Yours probably is, too. Birds of a feather and all that. Reaching out to a new flock is something most of us don’t do very often. I suppose I shouldn’t expect my first time to be perfect, but I was disappointed in myself all the same. Bitterly disappointed.

Talking with a friend later that night, I got a bit of perspective. Of course we’re going to run into obstacles! Of course people see things differently! That’s why this project is so important—because right now our differences are keeping us from actively working on solutions.

Another truth: these people had stayed at work for 2 hours past quitting time to watch and discuss a movie about the environment. It’s more than possible that the level of their cynicism is exactly equal to the level of their care. Transform that cynicism into action and half our battle is won.

And, finally, on a personal note, recognizing one’s own limitations is the first step in learning how to transcend them. To break through a wall, you kinda have to hit it first. Failure holds more lessons than success.

So, now, several days later, I can see the gifts in this breakdown. My less-than-stellar performance showed me that if I really want to fulfill my mission, I have to grow. We all do. If we want to create something new, we have to let go of what we think we know. That beautiful, elegant future we dream of? It lies outside the borders of the easy and the familiar. It is a brand new place whose gates won’t swing open to us until we learn to see and create in brand new ways.

The question is: Can we lay down everything we think we are sure of and travel to that unknown land together? Are we willing to try and fail and try again?

I am, and I hope you are, too. Stay tuned.

I recently saw Horton Hears a Who and it was so good I went to see it again. The movie is gorgeous to look at, the acting is wonderful, and the story embodies a sense of faith, optimism, and responsibility that fits right into The Sunny Way of looking at things. Dr. Seuss sure knew what he was talking about.

Last night my friend shared this quote from The Lorax with me, and, on this beautiful Saturday morning as I prepare for today’s Sunny Way meeting, I would like to share it with you.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Are there other amazing Dr. Seuss tales that speak to you even as an adult? Let us know in the comments. I myself am a HUGE fan of The Sneetches.

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Part 2:

The folks at TED have just posted video of the presentation Al Gore gave at the TED Conference in Monterey last month.

This is not the slideshow he’s presented over 2,000 times and which forms the basis of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, this is a new presentation “cobbled together” as he puts it, to fit the shorter format of the TED Conference, and delivered here for the first time.

Probably because of that, the talk is a little rough around the edges. Nonetheless, it’s a compelling, stirring performance and his theme of optimism in the face of the challenges ahead is one I think we can all get behind.

I recently watched The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard, a 20 minute film about consumerism, its destructive effects, and a little eensy bit at the end about what we can do about it.

It is good—very well thought out and clearly presented. One thing I loved hearing about was how consumerism was designed into our economy as its driving force after World War II. This quote by economist Victor Lebow is astounding:

“Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

Too bad Lebow’s predictive powers didn’t follow all the way through to how future generations were supposed to deal with the mess created by this idea ... but I digress.

It seems to me that this film was made to introduce people to the concepts of sustainability, and it mostly does a very good job of that.

But there is a bit in the intro, about 2 minutes in, where Leonard says “The government is there to take care of us. That’s its job.” That statement right there just turned off about a hundred gazillion people, including me. And most of the people who would be turned off by that statement? Are probably the ones who most need to watch the rest of this video, which really is excellent.

There’s also a bit where a diminutive government stick figure shines the shoes of the big fat corporation stick figure in a top hat, which made me giggle, but I’m not sure how many conservative types will stick around after that.

Maybe Leonard doesn’t care, but she should. Isn’t it possible that there are people who identify more with conservative, small-government values but still are interested in a better environmental paradigm? The choir understands the sermon already. It’s time to widen the circle.

Besides turning off non-liberals, I also don’t think it’s particularly useful to cast corporations in the role of villain. We are all in this mess together. Every person and every organization has a contribution to make.

In fact, giant corporations have the biggest potential to turn things around. I and everyone I know can be yurt-living vegans and still never have anywhere near the impact of Wal-Mart increasing the fuel efficiency of their truck fleet by 25%, as they are on track to do by the end of this year. Any solution for our future is going to require the full participation of industry, so why antagonize?

So much environmental rhetoric is full of this venom for corporations. I believe it’s a huge failing on the movement’s part for many reasons, but none more important than this: people do not respond as well to anger as they do to encouragement and inclusion. Ever have a boss who yelled at you vs. a boss who was nice to you? Who did you work harder for?

Corporations are made up of people, and people can be reached if you approach them in a way they can respond to. Accusing them of killing babies is probably not the most effective tactic.

What do you think about The Story of Stuff? Let us know in the comments.