My First Solar Post

Attention Toxified Earthlings: This is my first solar posting. I am writing to you by the grace of sun power. My southern exposure is reeling the meter backwards as I write.

It is: intensely satisfying. Please do come over and turn something on.

I'm on a roll. Where is my next biodiesel hippie schoolbus? Call me now! I feel so impatient to revamp everything.

As ecology diarists may remember from my earlier post, I left Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie with more of a whimper in my heart than an ecstatic bang. I needed stronger stuff!— where could I find it? 

I know many of you have found the movie a great turning point for disbelievers, or kooks who think there are "two sides" to global warming... I'm all for their conversion.

But for myself, I've been searching for a radical ecology documentary that would lift my spirits and give me some fresh spunk. Mainline me, baby!

Well, I found it, courtesy of Andrew Leonard at Salon.

Meet community architect and designer William McDonough. Behold his video from a speech he made at the 2000 Bioneers conference.

It's the complete opposite of Gore's movie. The production values are terrible— it's someone's camcorder set up in a dreary conference room. The view alternates between dull-colored charts, and John's un-made-up face, the talking head.

What is he says, however, is electrifying. His ideas: mind-expanding. His wit: sheer bliss.

He's thrillingly controversial, and global in a whole new way: "When are we all going to start thinking of ourselves as indigenous people?" he asks.

He pooh-poohs "sustainability"— "If I asked if you were married, and you said 'Yes,' and I said, 'How is it?' and you said, 'Sustainable' — does that sound very promising?"

McDonough wants to go way beyond sustainability. He wants a fecund, thriving ecological life force. He wants to make "large!" thumbprints— that leave vast wetlands. Instead of telling you to bike or pray harder, he talks about his case histories with companies and communities that take on vast undertakings where their whole culture will be changed for an environmentally sensational, (not just sustainable) future.

You know, I bet environmentalist Al Gore privately thinks this guy is remarkable too... how 'bout making another fancy movie and talking about these ideas?

I'm posting the film here. It's a half-hour or so... which i realize is a long time when you're web surfing.

It's largely a listening experience, where the visuals are not that important. (Although some of his "charts," like the one on "stuff and time," are very funny). Bake a cake and listen in!