Our Latest Video News in October

Hi friends,

It’s been some time since my last message so I wanted to give an update on where we’re at with our eco-video series.

We got a great computer as a result of the grant from EFI that I mentioned before – it’s a Mac tower that is ridiculously fast and has plenty of hard drive space, which you need if you’re going to be doing a lot of video work! I’ve been spending hours transferring all the video footage onto the computer to begin editing – it’s a long process.

In the meantime, we’ve been continuing to film more interviews over the last month!

Several weeks ago we visited Silvermine Farm, a family-owned farm in our hometown of Sutton. Carrick interviewed farmer Martha Cole about the sustainability of local farms vs. large agribusiness, and what CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are all about. Our family joined the CSA that Silvermine is part of in Sutton and we got a tasty supply of fresh veggies throughout the summer - we know where it came from and who grew it. Carrick also talked to Martha about the debate over buying local food that may not be organic vs. organic food that is grown and shipped thousands of miles.

We recently spent the long weekend in Washington DC to visit the Solar Decathlon 2009, a competition of 20 universities from around the world to design and build the best solar house. They set up each house on the National Mall and open them up for 2 weeks for the public to come tour. Carrick and I visited in 2007 (it happens every 2 years) and filmed a video compilation that turned out to be the only video overview of the competition on the internet. We toured again this year and shot plenty of video footage to include in our eco-video series. It’s such an inspiring sight to be there, seeing these homes that get all their electricity, heat, hot water, etc. from the sun. You can learn all about the Solar Decathlon at their website, www.SolarDecathlon.org.

While in Washington DC, Carrick also interviewed Bracken Hendricks about the government’s role in supporting renewable energy and sustainability. Mr. Hendricks works at the Center for American Progress and co-wrote the book ‘Apollo’s Fire’ with Congressman Jay Inslee, which proposes to move forward with clean, renewable energy with the same speed and urgency that we Americans were challenged with putting a man on the moon in 10 years.

This last weekend Carrick and I drove out to Great Barrington in western Massachusetts to interview Bill McKibben, who is one of the leading authors on climate change and organizes international actions to support climate change legislation. We’ve found along our travels that people support clean, renewable energy for a variety of reasons, whether environmental, national security, the strength of the economy, religion, etc. I thought it was important to have someone to speak to each of these reasons, and for climate change it would be hard to find anyone more qualified to speak to the issue! What I found after our cross-country journey was that we had filmed many great examples of the solutions that are happening all over the U.S., but we needed more context, the ‘why’ we should care about these issues, not just the ‘how’.

So that’s the latest – we’re still filming and transferring all the video footage. Breaking my ankle really threw a wrench in the works but now that I’m walking without crutches or cast and can drive again we’re moving forward. I’m excited to get editing now that we have so much footage ready on the computer – you’ll be the first to know when we have videos ready to show!

Be well,
Colin
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Our Renewable Nation, A Cross-Country Eco-Video Adventure
www.OurRenewableNation.org