Modern Life

Laurie David On 'Parker Spitzer': 'Modern Life Is Tearing Us Apart'

In her recent interview on "Parker Spitzer," producer, author, and environmental activist Laurie David discussed her newest book and her fight to raise awareness about global warming.


In David's new book, "The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect With Your Kids, One Meal At A Time," she stresses the importance of eating meals together as a family. "Modern life is tearing us apart," David says, imploring that the ritual of sitting down to regular meals can improve a myriad of areas in our lives and relationships. David has dinner with her children every night, noting that the routine it is especially important for families separated by divorce, saying "the conversation is just as important as the food."


In addition to having family dinners every single night, David has many achievements in environmental activism, including producing the 2006 Academy Award winner, "An Inconvenient Truth."


David admits that she is upset by how little progress is being made toward confronting global warming, but realizes that it is not an easy battle. "I just think the forces against change are so strong, so rich, so powerful, so organized, and they're continuing to keep the public confused and misinformed about this issue," she says.


David expresses concern over the growing trend of Republicans who dismiss the scientific evidence of global warming. She says that she doesn't understand "when science became something you believe in," noting that "facts are facts."


However, David remains hopeful that change will come soon. She tells Parker and Spitzer, "Because I'm an environmentalist, I'm an optimist," and hopes that Obama has a strategy just around the corner to propel environmental progress forward.

Modern life, consumerism and lobbyists. That is it in a nutshell.
Optimist? Gee I wish I was like her. But I think we have reached past the tipping point. Life may go on but changes will definitely be felt by all. With the right skills and attitude - survival is possible.

Make some noise!

Why the BP Spill Hasn't Invigorated Environmentalism

In 1969, an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California released a few million gallons of oil into marine ecosystems -- eight months later, it was among the primary catalysts for the biggest pro-environmental movement in the nation's history, starting with the first Earth Day. That 'national teach-in' day in turn lead to some of the strongest and most effective environmental laws and regulations ever created, it yielded the founding of the EPA. Fast forward to 2010, where we're still in the midst of the biggest oil catastrophe in our history, with an incomparable 100-180 million gallons of oil fouling the water. And yet, there's no sense of focused national outrage (discontent is probably a better word), no movement gaining momentum to address the roots of the problem that lead to the BP spill, and the government has shown that it feels no pressure to take significant action on behalf of the environment. What gives? ...
But I wonder. The cynic in me says we're unlikely to see anything near the public outpouring of support for the environment we did 40 years ago, for a few simple reasons. Primarily, the sentiment behind the movement then was new, it was bold, pioneering -- participating in the movement was exhilarating. Knowledge of the extent by which American industry was destroying our natural habitats and resources was just then bubbling to the surface of the public consciousness. Joining the green movement was sort of like Beatlemania -- few had seen, heard, or done anything like that before. And just like we're unlikely to see a pop act command that kind of attention again, I think the same goes for an environmental movement encompassing many of the same ideals.

Also contributing is the fact that corporations were far less prepared to cope with the charges leveled at them -- they had little course of action but to complain how insignificant the environment was in comparison to businesses' contribution to society. Now, every self-respecting oil company channels money into front groups, lobbying campaigns, and PR efforts, not just during a spill, but all the time to keep public opinion in check, and to hedge against such disasters.

Finally, the culture of special interests has grown so pervasive that many Americans feel like it's a hopeless situation in Congress -- there's a sense that it's impossible for the common man to get heard through the thicket of lobbyists and campaign financiers. A perfect example of this is the recently deceased climate legislation -- polls found majorities supported climate and clean energy action time and again, and yet the Senate had no qualms giving it up because it's too touchy a subject for an election year. The gulf has widened between civilians and our elected officials to the point that few expect much from them at all.

One another all-important reason is not mentioned - so many are more interested in Lohan's jail stint, what Snooks is wearing, which party they are going to....That is the real reason. Too hung up on entertainment, more interested in the cult of personality...

L.O.V.E.

LOVE for the Environment

All we need is LOVE.

There are many things and we can (and should) do to preserve and protect our environment if we want to preserve and protect life on Earth. Reducing consumption of resources, reusing products and materials, and recycling what can no longer be reused are all critical to being more sustainable. However, the most important personal thing we can each do for the environment is to fall in LOVE: Local, Organic, Vegetarian/Vegan Eating. (Vegetarians don't eat any animals; even better, vegans don't consume any animal products, including eggs and dairy.)

There is consensus amongst the overwhelming majority of the world's scientists, environmentalists, governments, major corporations, and many others that climate change in the form of global warming is, by far, the most important environmental problem facing life on Earth. Carrying reusable bags, changing to energy-efficient light bulbs, saving water, and driving less are all very good things to do, yet they all pale in comparison to the cool effects of LOVE.

None of these or other positive actions prevent us from doing others, and we should try to do everything we can to live more sustainable lives. However, eating has a much bigger personal impact on the environment - as well as our health and the health of animals - than anything else most of us ever do.

Spread the Love!

Experts On Green Living

Grandparents

"Going green," may seem like a new movement, but the concepts behind it are not. As we ring in a new decade today, we thought it would be fun to look at great green practices from the past. You may already have some green experts in your family, known to you as your grandparents. Those of us that had grandparents grew up during the depression, "reduce, reuse, recycle," wasn't just a way to care for the environment; it was the way to live. Check out nine ways that your grandparents were living green, long before it was cool.

Great article about lessons we should learn from the past. From line drying to victory gardens. Maybe we should resurrect those words of wisdom - "Close the light when you leave the room", "Close the refrigerator door","Go outside and play."

Food in 2010

Eat This, Not That, in 2010

So you've begun your New Year's resolution list. Any of this sound familiar?

"This year, I resolve to never be late."
"This year, I resolve to exercise more."
"This year, I resolve to (insert anything about dieting, weight loss or eating right here)."

Since many a New Year's resolution includes something about dieting, we took note of Change.org's recent post on their Sustainable Foods blog: 5 Foods You Should Avoid in 2010. But this list doesn't simply offer avoidance suggestions to improve your body. By making better substitutions, you'll help put our global body on a much-needed diet, rejecting some of the junk currently gumming up the works.

What to avoid:

1. "Factory farmed" meats
2. Anything on a seafood watch list
3. Anything with high fructose corn syrup
4. Foie gras
5. Out of season produce

Five easy things to resolve.  Resolutions easy to keep.

I'm an endangered species

Cover via Amazon

t r u t h o u t | Are Environmentalists an Endangered Species?

Way back during the first decade of this century, the Earth was roamed by a beast that will soon be extinct. Environmentalists, it seemed, were everywhere: at the supermarket, plucking at organic produce; at the stoplight, breaking in their hybrid cars; on your neighbor’s roof, putting up solar panels. Even oil companies got in on the action, smiling green from the pages of your magazine.

Yet the last 10 years will be remembered as the time that the environmental movement began its slow sink into the tar pits of obsolescence. It’s not that people have stopped caring about the health of the Earth. They’re more concerned than ever. What’s changing is the reasons why. Protecting the planet and its ecosystems is no longer the purview of those who worry about tropical forests, polar bears or the spotted owl. Increasingly, it’s the priority of people who care about themselves.

The public has woken up to the fact that much of what it once considered narrow environmental concerns can have an impact on the way we live. It’s a link that ecologists have labored to make for years, with little success. No matter how often they maintained that a patch of preserved forest could contain a yet undiscovered cure for cancer, what was guaranteed was the virgin timber in its trees and the prairie pasture beneath them.

It took something on the scale of climate change to drive the point home. There’s no telling to what extent the emissions of our cars, factories and power plants contributed to the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina. But the 2005 flooding of New Orleans marked the high-water mark of the environmental movement, the moment when it became clear that caring for nature was not altruistic, but ultimately selfish and self-protective.

Compare Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring," the book credited with the birth of modern environmentalism, with the movie that marked the beginning of its slide towards death, Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth." The first warns of a countryside devoid of birdsong. The other, of a world stripped of Florida.

The old habits are dying hard, but they’re dying nonetheless. Environmentalism sometimes bore the aesthetics and asceticism of a religion. The new movement is firmly grounded in mammon. The ranks of those who revered nature as a counterbalance to consumerism are being penetrated by a generation that sees sustainability not as an alternative to growth, but as its prerequisite.

Gore himself seems only dimly aware of the change he’s wrought. Speaking at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, he warned the North Pole had a 75 percent chance of being completely ice-free within a decade — a dramatic change, to be sure, but one whose most noticeable impact will be positive. Freed of ice, the Arctic Ocean becomes a channel for shipping and a potential source of mineral wealth.

And while the polar bear remains the symbol of climate change, there’s a growing awareness that the warming of the world will be hitting closer to home. Rising seas will threaten coastal cities. Drifting ecosystems will wreak havoc on health and agriculture. Natural disaster and shifting weather patterns will send hundreds of thousands on the move.

The question for the next decade is what to do about it. It’s no surprise that the Copenhagen talks — long heralded as a make or break moment in the fight against climate change — ended in failure. Environmental challenges are uniquely difficult in that they frequently involve sharing common, but limited, resources. It’s no coincidence that this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom, spent her career studying the problem. One thing is clear, however. It’s going to be easier to muscle towards a solution if we realize that what’s at risk isn’t the environment, the planet or nature. It’s each and every one of us.

If selfish solves things - fine.