New Interview: Chelsea Sexton

I have a few additions and subtractions to make this week on our destination list.

I'm excited to announce our most recent addition, Chelsea Sexton, who starred in the 2006 documentary, 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' Chelsea is a major industry advocate for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles and will speak with us about the future of auto industry and the role that plug-in cars will play. Until recently she has served as the Executive Director of Plug In America, a coalition of individuals and organizations that advocates for the preservation and manufacture of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles.

We've also removed several destinations from the list, including our stops in Canada. We had planned on spending a week in Toronto on our return leg before going home, but $400 in passport fees is much more than I anticipated. The two stops we had set up were Zenn Motors, which currently makes low-speed electric vehicles, and Wildflower Farms, which makes Eco-Lawn grass seed. This will allow us to spend more time in a few cities in the U.S., including Austin, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I also decided to take General Motors off the list - we were going to visit Detroit and make a video profile of the Chevy Volt. I tried many avenues of communication without success - I guess they're busy trying to stay out of bankruptcy. It works out much better to interview Chelsea Sexton, who can provide a great industry perspective on electric vehicles, plus if you've seen 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' then you can appreciate the irony of my replacing the GM interview with Chelsea.

Carrick and I are speaking on Monday at Bancroft School, a private school in Worcester, where we'll be speaking in the auditorium to grades 3-8. It will be our biggest crowd yet! I'm still working on being comfortable speaking to a room of a few hundred kids, but fortunately Carrick's got my back.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Be well,

Colin

Contacts!

This has been a week of good news and good networking!

I got a preview of our updated web design and it's great - such an improvement! It's a great design which makes all the important content easy to get to. I'll be making the big announcement when that goes online soon.

I met this week with Rep. Jennifer Callahan, representative to the Massachusetts State House for our town, Sutton. Rep. Callahan has been a strong supporter of the recent environmental legislation at the State House, including the Green Communities Act and the Global Warming Solutions Act. She's offered to help us network with schools and we talked about visiting the State House on Earth Day before we begin our cross-country journey. Carrick and I were also invited to give a presentation about our video project to the Sutton Board of Selectmen on January 20 at 7:00pm. It's great to have the support of our local government and their enthusiasm for our project.

I attended the Mass Climate Action Network (MCAN) annual conference at MIT on Sunday which affirmed for me the need to draw from many different groups for support of renewable energy and sustainability. As an environmentalist, I think we focus too narrowly on a single motivator like climate change and I think it's important to remember that issue is only one reason of many why people "come to the table" to work for a sustainable future. We won't succeed by trying to convince everyone about climate change - we don't have time and the work is too important. Van Jones of Green for All is a strong advocate of that broad-based appeal. Carrick and I are finding support from people of many different viewpoints - if we can do it then surely it can work on a much larger scale.

Be well,
Colin McCullough
www.OurRenewableNation.org

Vegan on the Road

We've had a full week to report on!

Carrick and I did two presentations in the last week; one at Grafton High School and also to the Boston Vegetarian Society. At Grafton High we spoke in the auditorium and showed the kids some of our videos and talked about our cross-country video project. We also talked about how much of a hot topic sustainability/ renewable energy is on college campuses, and how attractive it would look on those college applications to have done that kind of work at Grafton High. At Boston Vegetarian Society we talked to an enthusiastic crowd, met some great people, and enjoyed a yummy vegan buffet at Grasshopper Chinese Restaurant in Allston.

Speaking of eating vegan, one of the challenges of our cross-country journey will be finding vegan and veg-friendly places to eat on the road. Fortunately, there are great online resources for veg travelers at http://www.vegdining.com/ and http://www.happycow.net/. They list vegan, vegetarian, and veg-friendly restaurants state-by-state, with user reviews. There isn't going to be room to pack much food in the Beetle, so we'll be eating out much of the time. There are great veg restaurants all over the U.S. that we've heard about, and now we'll have our chance to visit them!

We have a new video up about what we've done to make our house more energy efficient. Carrick talks about insulation, sealing air leaks, programmable thermostats, etc. The link to the video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLAdv7h3AzE

This Sunday (November 16) I'll be attending the Massachusetts Climate Action Network conference at MIT in Cambridge. I'm looking forward to meeting folks there and continuing to make connections in the environmental community!

Be well,
Colin

The Future of Our Renewable Nation

It's worth taking a look ahead to our future plans once we're finished our cross-country journey and have finished our video. Here are some thoughts about the possibilities:

1. Once the video is finished, then the marketing and distribution really begins! Right now we can show some examples and talk about our plans, but the game changes when we can show the finished product.

2. We'll continue to give presentations in schools and to groups, focusing on our cross-country video project. Speaking fees and further donations will go towards DVD duplication and distribution.

3. We'll be developing an in-depth resource for actions kids can take to make their communities more sustainable. Most resources on the web focus on adults, missing a critical segment of the population - the most important for our future! We'll develop the site and actively collaborate with the other adult-focused resources online.

4. Writing a Book - Developing a resource guide on the web for kids focused on renewables and sustainability will give us the opportunity to go more in-depth, writing a book for kids. We can get more into the success stories of kids making sustainable changes in their communities.

5. 'Do-Gooder' is the project I was working out when I had the idea for Our Renewable Nation, and I'd like to get back to it and make it happen. The idea is for a monthly potluck community group that makes no-interest loans to people in the community to help people afford energy efficiency improvements in their homes and renewable energy for their homes. It's all about investing in communities to be more sustainable.

So that's a glimpse of the future possibilities - who knows what will happen! There will be many doors that open up once the video is completed, I'm certain. We have several big events coming up in the next week, so I'll report on those next week!

Be well,
Colin

Our Public Speaking Tour Begins

This past week, we began giving presentations to spread the word about our cross-country eco-video project, making connections in the community, and gaining support for our work. My son Carrick and I are showing selections of our eco-videos, talking about our upcoming cross-country video project, and talking about everyday ways to live more sustainably.

A week ago we spoke at Sudbury Earth Decade, a chapter of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, and again on Saturday at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, a Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary. At both talks we met some great people and made important connections.
We have five more speaking events coming up before the end of 2008, but I'm scheduling a heavy list for after the holidays are over. It's hard enough to get people to come to speaking events; I don't want to compete with the holidays and shopping! We're networking and setting up talks in a whole variety of places, including churches, schools, libraries, senior centers and civic groups. My goal is 2-3 per week until we leave in May for our journey.

This week I also began a weekly email update for people who want regular updates on our cross-country project. We'll talk about new destinations added, new sponsorships and partnerships, appearances in the media, etc. Once we begin our journey in May we'll start sending out daily email updates as we travel across the U.S. and back.

I'm hoping to have a new and improved design for our website, www.OurRenewableNation.org, within a month. What's there right now is the best I could do on my own, but we could do with a more professional appearance. Our friend Tracy Axelson, a professional web designer, has generously agreed to help us look sharper on the web. Look for the updated website soon!

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org

Added Destiinations: Chico Bag, Klean Kanteen, Xeko

San Francisco may be the California city to grab all the green headlines, but the city of Chico, about 3 hours northeast, is home to some great green businesses. We've decided to stick around Chico for a few days to get some interviews with our latest additions - Chico Bag and Klean Kanteen.

Chico Bag makes reusable shopping bags that smoosh down to a small pouch, making them easy to carry and store. They're made of washable, durable polyester, and can hold up to 25 lbs. of groceries. Over 1 TRILLION single-use plastic bags are used and thrown away every year, and the average American uses 300-700 bags each year. Chico Bags are a handy way of breaking the plastic bag habit!

Klean Kanteen is a Chico company that makes stainless steel water bottles which are reusable, lightweight, and a healthy alternative to plastic water bottles. Our family has a handful of Klean Kanteens and we use them all the time! 38 billion plastic water bottles go into U.S. landfills each year, with only 23% being recycled. We'll visit Klean Kanteen to learn more about the smarter alternative to buying bottled water!

We've also added another stop in Seattle at Xeko, the collectible cardgame revolving around endangered species. "Xeko is dedicated to a bright green future and preserving some of our planet's greatest riches" Xeko is a game of trading and collecting cards somewhat like Pokemon, but where kids learn about habitats and animals while they play. We'll visit Xeko headquarters to see the people behind the game!

Be well,
Colin

Our Renewable Nation DVD

The ultimate purpose of our cross-country eco-video project is to make a series of video profiles about renewable energy sites and interview people who have made impacts in sustainability, and put together these profiles on DVD to distribute to schools nationally.  The idea is for school teachers to be able to pick and choose which 5-minute profiles they want to use on a particular day.  One day they might be teaching about solar and other renewables, and they'll be able to choose just those videos that best cover that topic.  Other topics might be electric vehicles, sustainable design, zero-waste/recycling, etc.  Our mission is to inspire and empower kids to create a renewable and sustainable future, and it's important and timely that kids see what that future can look like.

Why create a DVD of 5-minute profiles instead of compiling all the footage into a documentary?  I think it's more useful to teachers in this format rather than a 2-hour linear, beginning-to-end documentary.  Watching a 2-hour video is not realistic in many school schedules.  Another reason is that each profile deserves 5 minutes of it's own time, and this way I won't have to cut any of our destinations out of our final video just because it doesn't fit into the flow.  

We're hoping to distribute our video through the National Science Teachers Association, which would give our video national distribution.  I'm working on that connection now.

Another avenue for distribution is to post all of our videos on our YouTube page, www.YouTube.com/OurRenewableNation.  We'll upload each video profile as it is completed.

That's all for now - Be well,

Colin