The best of the week at EcoSalon, hand-picked for your clicking pleasure.

Fancy a challenge? We challenge you to…

Think about your bucket list – long and hard.

Read unusually – because it may open your heart and  mind and leave you changed.

Track down a copy of the UK box office hit The Age Of Stupid, in preparation for its creator’s latest work, Just Do It.

Keep your morning coffee away from spiders – it makes them go nuts.

Spice up your love-life by hitting the road (but hey, keep it legal).

The post The Friday 5: We Challenge You appeared first on EcoSalon.

Existential angst? That’s for amateurs. True purveyors of panic disorder know that solastalgia is where all the cool kids hang out.

You might know it: that feeling of powerlessness when you see your local nature reserve steamrolled to build a new housing estate, or the helplessness you experience over climate change. The feeling that, as an individual there is so very little you can really do, and worse, there is no escaping it. Move to the wilds of Canada? I don’t think so. Run away to the Australian Outback? Not a chance.

For me, it began after watching The Age of Stupid. I left the screening gasping for breath. That’s it then, said my brain. Humans are too stupid, too selfish, too ignorant. My life, my plans, my hopes will never come to fruition because in 10 years time we’ll be embroiled in all-out global war ending, inevitably, painfully, finally, in a Cormac McCarthy-style denouement of doom and horror. Wonderful.

My form of campaigning – environmental journalism – came to a pretty abrupt stop after that. I couldn’t focus on anything environment related without being sent back into that panic. I didn’t want to read anything or speak to anyone. In a desperate rush to meet a deadline without doing any of the things that are usually required to write an article I used an old interview with a very well known politician, got all my facts wrong, wrote an opinion that was funny round the dinner table but mortifying when I saw it in print, got threatened with the Press Complaints Commission and that, as they say, was pretty much that.

A year and a half later and I’m just about ready to get back on the eco-horse. I’m feeling strong. I’ve got a bucket full of optimism and another of patience. I’ve started speaking to old contacts again, explaining that my absence was largely down to panic and terror and the occasional insanely unprofessional outburst.

Curiously, instead of cocking their heads to one side in faux sympathy with the crazy lady I’ve found people relating.

“Omg,” they say. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“Some days it’s all I can do to keep it together.”

“Some days I have to lie down in a dark room for a very long time.”

“It’s not just the weight of work on my shoulders,” one person told me, “I feel like I’ve got the entire future of humanity on them.”

Environmental campaigners deal with a lot. News about the state of the world is bad enough, but to be interested in conservation or renewable energy or growing your own food or not wasting stuff is also to open yourself up to plenty of abuse: we’re all soap-dodging, tree-hugging, work-shy deluded, good for nothing liberals, not to mention all those secret meetings we have about being power crazy commie socialists who want to control the world through taxes and fear and conspiracies about invisible see-oh-twos.

Because it’s something we’re passionate about or interested in, it doesn’t seem to follow that it can also be stressful. Yet daily, we are surrounded by the loss of things we care deeply about. Daily, we are let down by ineffective laws or politicians. Daily, we are disappointed in humanity. These aren’t the kind of things that fly in gently and kiss you on the forehead and it’s exactly because of that passion and interest that it is stressful.

Porcelain, Kate MacDowell

The existence of solastalgia was first discussed in Philosophy Activism Nature by Professor Glenn Albrecht in 2005. In academic circles, it’s a word that crops up from time to time but it isn’t something we hear in everyday conversation. Perhaps more commonly discussed is ecopsychology, which on a very basic level links psychology and ecology, suggesting that exposure to the natural world can aid, among other things, mental health problems.

The corollary of ecopsychology is that our diminishing natural environment can create or exacerbate mental health problems, or simply lead to a serious freak out. But while ecopsychology has its own eponymous peer-reviewed journal, and there are organizations dedicated to helping those with mental health problems find solace in the great outdoors, those involved in environmentalism are largely unsupported.

It is, of course, entirely possible that there is no support out there because no one is asking for it, but maybe no one is asking because no one else is asking. We can’t keep it quiet forever though, people are starting to notice we’re cracking up. So here goes nothing:

Hi. My name’s Sarah and I find dealing with all this environment stuff pretty stressful. I don’t want to have another conversation about arsing wind turbines or bloody recycling. I just want some action. Climate change scares the living daylights out of me and makes me furious in equal measures. Please be nice to me, and to everyone else out there. In the meantime I’d like to offer some tips for keeping it together when it all seems to be falling apart.

Look for the positive stories
Joy can be found in small places. Every success, no matter how small, is inspiring. Environmentalist and author Paul Hawken said, “If you just look at the data, and you’re optimistic then you’re not looking at the data. However, if you look at the people, and you see what’s happening in the world and you’re not optimistic then you don’t have a heart.”

Tell people you’re not prepared to discuss it
If you want to use reusable nappies, it’s no one else’s business. Tell them it’s not up for discussion. If you want to sell your car, it’s no one else’s business. Save your energy, save your sanity.

Don’t read the comments
Just say no to comments, unless they are on a particularly supportive and positive website (I heard about this great one called Ecosalon). Put the internet down and walk away.

Spend time with people who get it
Is there a Green Drinks in your area? If not, set one up. You don’t even have to talk green, but you know if you do it probably won’t make your head explode.

Celebrate life
That’s what it’s all about after all. Hug some trees, call your mom, smile at a stranger, spread a bit of joy. Feeling really enthused? You could even hug a climate change denier.

Image: Spanner Films, An Artist’s Journal, Tigr

The post Hi, My Name Is Sarah And I Need An Ecopsychologist appeared first on EcoSalon.

If you thought “Titantic” was a compelling disaster film, try wrapping your brain around the submersion of an entire nation – one of the most breathtaking and remote places on earth. This is the story currently being shot by award-winning documentary filmmaker Jon Shenk. He is trailing President Mohamed Nasheed to deliver this essential an message about how climate change can literally engulf us.

“If we get inundated with water from the effects of too much carbon in the atmosphere, then this planet is going to be a very unpleasant place to be,” says Shenk, who adds that the Maldives struggle packs a human message. “Hundreds of millions of refugees, famine – the U.S. and Europe will not be immune from this. Much of Florida will be underwater. So, I hope this film ends up being a story about people who are doing what they can to help the world.”

Shenk’s company, ActualFilms, has spent the past year interviewing the president who has been shopping for a new country to house the current inhabitants of nearly 1,200 islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. Global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise, and the Maldives is only eight feet above sea level at its highest point. Nasheed isn’t waiting around to sink or swim, and his plight promises to be a fascinating one to observe on the screen.

“I’m not interested in scaring people or overwhelming viewers with science and other information, but I hope people watch the film and see a group of people who are frightened about their future and who are using whatever tools they have at their disposal to prepare themselves,” says Shenk. “Nasheed and Maldivians are an example of people whose nation, way of life, and identity will very likely be erased by climate change.”

Slated for release in May 2010, Dirty Business uncovers the true social and environmental costs of coal power, following visionaries leading the path to an alternative energy future. The series of stories are shot in China, Saskatchewan, Kansas, West Virgina, Nevada and New York, with Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell examining the pitfalls of a continued dependency on 19th century technology linked as the largest single source of greenhouse gases. Along with the families battling the devastation on the front lines, the documentary features industry reps, political leaders, civil servants and environmental experts – all trying to piece the conflict together.

Split Estate warns, “What you don’t know CAN hurt you” and maps a tragedy in the making as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West, deal with their rural homes being threatened by polluted waters left unprotected by the oil and gas industry. The citizens frustrated by the erosion of their civil liberties, communities and health, share their struggle of clashing with interest of an industry that assures residents it is a “good neighbor.” In additional to meeting victims like Laura Amos (the proverbial canary in the coalmine) the documentary features civil servants, industry reps, political leaders and environmental activists, all trying to piece together the difficult conflict of energy versus humanity.

Garbage Dreams, which first aired the end of April, is a coming of age tale of three teenage boys in the world’s largest garbage village of Mokkatam on the outskirts of Cairo – home to 60,000 Zaballeen (Arabic for garbage people). They survive by recycling 80 percent of their trash, and when faced with the threat of the globalization of their trade by disposal companies, the villagers must make hard choices about how to sustain their community. The trailer shows the enormous burden the teenagers “endure” while combing for waste amid crowded rooftops where as geese, chickens and goats grazed on remnants of waste.

As Dreams director Mai Iskander so eloquently describes the children at work: “I filmed them day after day, scavenging for tiny bits of cardboard and plastic, the hard, dangerous and dreary work of carrying and sorting garbage with their bare hands, breathing in the dust of the plastic granulators and fabric grinders, making a tiny living from tiny bits of trash.” Iskander says he hopes the world will realize that it is these dreamers who will become world leaders as they save the Earth while lifting themselves out of poverty. The film has scored 21 awards including Al Gore Reel Current and Humanitas winner of the IDA (International Documentary Association).

“Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance?” Is the haunting question aptly posed in the film, The Age of Stupid, which started out as a documentary but was morphed into a futuristic drama following seven characters and narrated by  Pete Postlethwaite. The award-winning actor plays a shell-shocked lone survivor in the devastated future world of 2055 – reflecting on footage from 2008 and questioning why we sat back instead of moving on climate change.

A co-production between Franny Armstrong, first-time producer Lizzie Gillett and John Battsek’s company, Passion Pictures, was first released in 2009 to rave reviews. The New York Times wrote: “The film is a scorching appeal for humans to avoid knowingly up-ending the earth’s climate, delivered form the vantage point of 2055, when the giant London Eye Ferris wheel looks more like a waterwheel,with its bottom immersed in the Thames, along with much of central London.”

Unlike other green docs in recent years, Stupid uses dramatization to heighten emotions in prompting us to take action while we can. Filmmakers like Shenk believe that going this extra mile works better in getting people – especially Americans consumed with jobs and kids and busy lives – to care about the cause.

“I think if people saw this has a human problem they would be more likely to prioritize the issue,” Shenk finds. “I think much of the written material and documentaries about climate have focused on the facts – and the message communicated is not quite working. Movies can be great for moving hearts. Once you have the heart, the mind follows.”

To learn more about where to view these films and how to host community screenings and events, visit Working Films.

Images: Chi King, Mnn, Age of Stupid, Dirty Business, Split Estate, Haumaldives

The post New Documentaries Shed Light on Global Environmental Crises appeared first on EcoSalon.