January 18, 2010 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

Thanks to you and dozens like you, YERT received just over $20,000 in donations during December. This is an extraordinary breath of fresh air into the film– one that we plan to use very wisely. We have news about this and more in this latest YERT update!

In This Update:
• EVENT: YERT featured on FireDogLake TONIGHT, 8pm EST
• EVENT: Coal Free Future Project and YERT film preview on 2/11 in Pittsburgh
• Mark & Ben featured on “The Wall” by Repower America
• Film Festival Update
• Marketing Survey Results + ChicoBag Winners!
• How YERT raised $20,000

EVENT: YERT featured on FireDogLake TONIGHT, 8pm EST
YERT was recently asked to appear on FireDogLake.com– our second appearance on that site. FireDogLake has a regular “movie night” event, and tonight, Monday 9/18, they’ll be featuring three YERT short films with Ben, Julie, and Mark available for Q&A in chat form. Come join us! http://firedoglake.com/booksalon/ . Oh, and here are the three films for discussion:

• YERTpod30: Perennial Good Food in Kansas
• Wes Jackson’s most important challenge for us humans
• YERTpod31: An Epiphany of Three Wise Men in Missouri

EVENT: Coal Free Future Project and YERT film preview on 2/11 in Pittsburgh
We have a very special event coming up in Pittsburgh– Ben is a key performer in and has created short film “faux-mercials” and visuals for the Coal Free Future Project’s presentation of “Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of Coal,” an original multimedia play by Jeff Biggers, American Book Award winner and frequent contributor to Huffington Post and The Nation. From the Coal Free Future Project’s website: “The performance draws attention to the national scandal of mountaintop removal mining, and the grave health impacts of coal mining and coal-fired plants, and the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate destabilization triggered by CO2 emissions.” In addition to Jeff and Ben, the play features and is directed by Appalachian Voices National Field Coordinator and actress Stephanie Pistello, and is set to songs by some of coal country’s finest songwriters. After the performance, we’ll be screening selected “sneak peek” chapters of the YERT feature film– chapters featuring Joel Salatin, Wes Jackson, and other favorite personalities from the trip. We’re eager to get your honest feedback to help shape the creation of the film!

<-- Here's a picture from "Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of Coal," courtesy of the Coal Free Future Project.

The event happens from 8-10pm on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010 at the Union Project Great Hall, 801 N. Negley Ave., Pittsburgh, PA. Contact mark@yert.com for more details. For more information about the Coal Free Future Project and additional events around the country in Louisville, KY, Asheville, NC, Washington DC, Columbus, OH, Lexington, KY, and NYC, visit http://CoalFreeFutureProject.org.

Mark & Ben featured on “The Wall” by Repower America
Through a bit of magic performed by our friends at Repower America, Mark and Ben have been given exclusive “big boxes” to highlight the videos posted on “The Wall,” a collection of countless videos by activists sharing their views about the need for action on climate change. Ben and Mark created videos sharing our views, and our small squares were upgraded to more easy to see “large squares.” Browse around here and then click on the picture of Mark or Ben to listen to our messages! Here’s The Wall. Or if you want to cheat and go right to our video messages (with, oddly, small squares for us), click for Mark’s message and Ben’s Message.

Film Festival Update
Scott and Ben have been working their tails off on the latest cut of the YERT film, with our most recent film submission going into the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC. The next big entry date is the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, CO. We’re still waiting for results from the South By Southwest entry. In the meantime, we’re working to get the time of our film down to 90 minutes, with the next big developments likely to be the addition of additional narration and some motion graphics to move the story along more effectively. After that we’ll drop in some custom music. We are currently trying to get the film fully baked by the summer of 2010.

Marketing Survey Results + ChicoBag Winners!
Thank you all for the excellent feedback that you contributed through the marketing survey that we released in December. It was extremely helpful to our planning and marketing efforts– so much so that I’d like to share it with you and put the knowledge into the public domain to help other filmmakers out there. You can check out the data about pricing and demographics here. And there were some wonderful suggestions for marketing an environmental feature film in our open-ended question, with the top 99 suggestions collected in our blog here.

And, as promised, we’ll be shipping out a YERT ChicoBag to five special survey participants, chosen at random (via random number generator in Excel). Congratulation to the winners, specifically…

• Joan Hare
• David Buscher
• Callie Williams
• Aaron Meyers
• Ellie Gordon

How YERT raised $20,000
We are thrilled and a little stunned by the incredible flow of donations from YERT supporters all around the world. We received contributions from over 30 brand new donors in December, bringing the total number of donors to 119, raising just over $20,000 in December. We blew away the matching donation of $3,000, and apparently that got the ball rolling with people coming out in waves to support the project. Most (95%) of the money came through checks written to Pittsburgh Filmmakers, with 5% coming through PayPal.

We were wondering how we were going to find the funds to finish the film, and this round of support lets us worry much less about that and focus on finishing the film. We still need more money to do it right, but this keeps the core team in gear for the foreseeable future. It also gives us more options for marketing and distribution when that time comes around– increasing the impact of the YERT film even more.

We can’t thank you enough for all of your incredible support. May you have a happy, GREEN new year, and please keep in touch.

Peace,
Ben, Julie, and Mark
team@yert.com

http://www.yert.com

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December 29, 2009 by Mark.

Since we announced our $3,000 matching contribution on Dec. 17, we have received an amazing $2,350 of contributions. Doubled, that comes to $4,700 raised in less than two weeks! Can you make a donation to use up $650 of remaining matching funds before the end of the year?

Click here to make a tax-deductible and MATCHED donation to YERT!

And if you haven’t had a chance to check out the “YERT Filmmaking Lair,” take a look! You’ll see Ben, Scott, and Mark discuss the nitty gritty elements of eco-filmmaking.

Click here to watch the “YERT Filmmaking Lair”…

This is your last chance in 2009 to put your money where your mouth, or your mind, or your heart is. Every penny removed from the “extractive” economy and delivered to YERT helps to bring about a more sustainable world in a direct, loving way. Can you help us reach our year-end goal of $10,000?

Count my donation as a vote for a more sustainable world!

As always, we’re funded by love, encouragement, and your financial contributions. Thank you for sending them our way!

Happy New Year,

Ben, Julie, and Mark

team@yert.com

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December 17, 2009 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

We’ve created a new video to give you an inside look at the “YERT Filmmaking Lair,” where our feature film is coming to life– see our grand plans on the giant whiteboard, meet our editor, Scott, and then find out what gives him his secret powers!

Click here to watch the “YERT Filmmaking Lair”…

We also just received a generous matching offer from an anonymous YERT donor: $3,000 of funds to double donations given before January 1st!

Click here to make a tax-deductible and MATCHED donation to YERT!

We’re trying to raise a total of $10,000 by the end of the year, which will give us the funds to pay our editor for a few more months and kick start our grass-roots distribution and fundraising plans for the new year. Can you spare a dime? Please consider making a year-end tax-deductible donation at
http://yert.com/donate.php.

We believe that the planet and those working for her care deserve a voice, and the YERT feature film will do just that. We’re funded by love, encouragement, and your finacial contributions, so please help us keep the message alive and well by making a MATCHED donation.

Thanks for your support!

Ben, Julie, and Mark

team@yert.com

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December 17, 2009 by Mark.

Just wanted to let you all know that Ben and Scott submitted a fresh new cut of the YERT feature film to the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival! They pulled a butt-kickin’ all nighter last friday and today I received official notice that our submission was received. So now we wait. Looks like we’ll find out it we’re in the festival on or before February 12, 2010. Stay tuned!!

Best,
Mark

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December 4, 2009 by Ben.

We finally received the results from Sundance and they are:

YERT was not accepted…

…but all is certainly not lost. (In fact they only took one environmental documentary film out of nearly 10,000 total submissions.) This just makes all of you, our grassroots supporters, all the more important. In fact, we’re convinced more than ever that the feature film will move countless environmentalists to action– both new and battle-tested activists alike. We just need a little more time to get it ready for prime time. We’re seriously examining the possibility of self-distribution, but we need to collect more information to do it well.

Please take our “YERT MARKETING SURVEY” by answering 10 quick questions here:

http://yertmarketing.questionpro.com/

As a thank you, we’ll give away five YERT ChicoBags to five lucky survey responders, selected at random.

Our submission to Sundance was very rough and incomplete– nothing compared to what we expect to create with a little more time (and money). Now we have our sights set on several other solid festivals - SXSW, Florida, and Tribeca. While the film remains far from done, we’ll keep whittling away at it until it finds its way successfully out into the world.

In the meantime, stay tuned for continued updates and thank you for helping us get this far. And don’t forget to fill out the YERT MARKETING SURVEY!

http://yertmarketing.questionpro.com/

Happy Holidays,
Ben, Julie, and Mark

P.S. Many thanks to our awesome unpaid marketing intern, Vidya Sarma from Chicago, for assembling the survey!

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November 30, 2009 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

YERT had a fantastic visit to Los Angeles and San Francisco, just before Thanksgiving. We gave sneak peeks to a few chapters from the upcoming YERT feature film and received extremely positive reviews across the board, from average citizens to industry professionals– from Sony, Warner Brothers, and Disney! Read on for highlights…

While Ben and Scott pulled multiple all-nighters to finish key chapters in advance of our Sony screening, Mark gave 11 YERT presentations in one week, introducing the project to hundreds of people– many working in the heart of the entertainment industry. Ben was planning to join me in CA, but a last-minute bout of family flu on the home front kept him in Kentucky to hold down the fort. I missed him on the trip, but his editing efforts at home that week were invaluable…

Here’s a quick outline of what you’ll find in this update:

• All Saints Church in Pasadena
• The Great Waste Challenge
• Warner Brothers
• Sony Pictures
• EPA and Berkeley
• Green Festival
• Presidio Green MBA Friends
• Wrap-up
• ChicoBags for Sale!

All Saints Church in Pasadena
Things got off to a great start with a presentation packed by 50+ eager audience members at All Saints Church in Pasadena. All Saints is a hotbed for activist activity, and the audience was delighted and inspired by the footage and stories from the road trip– so much so that we’re going to try to visit again for another presentation. That event sparked all sorts of interesting activity, including a presentation at USC (University of Southern California) and a private screening for eco-activist friends of Don and Mary Thomas on Wednesday of that week.

The Great Waste Challenge
We also made some headway in the long process of presenting inside elementary, middle, and high schools in the Los Angeles area. A connection through Pittsburgh’s own Carl Kurlander (writer of “St. Elmo’s Fire” and producer of “My Tale of Two Cities” ) put us in touch with Janet Loeb, a parent and green consultant working to bring sustainability to schools in Los Angeles via the “Great Waste Challenge.” They’re working on innovative ways of reducing waste in schools (similar to YERT’s “one shoebox of garbage” challenge), and planning to eventually integrate composting and farming projects to the mix. We love what they’re doing and hope to work together down the road as they bring environmental awareness to schools in fun, creative ways. If it takes off in LA, then we hope to see it expand nationwide!

Warner Brothers
Janet also put us in touch with friends of hers in the media industry, who promptly invited me to their home for a private screening. The husband in that friendly couple is an executive at Warner Brothers, and he was extremely impressed by the YERT project and immediately started brainstorming with me on ways to get our film funded and our footage out into the world. We’ll keep you posted on those efforts as they develop.

Sony Pictures
The Sony presentation was a highlight of the week, and I spent most of the day on-site at their massive studio facility in Culver City. It was a “green Sony day” of sorts, and after lunch with my friendly hosts, I proceeded to attend an event in which they discussed all the ways in which Sony was going green. Kind of amazing to see such a massive business grapple with the early steps of greening their entire organization. They introduced the YERT project by name and encouraged all attendees to go to our screening later that evening! Next I spent a couple hours downloading newly finished film chapters from the all-nighter-pulling dynamic-editing-duo of Ben and Scott, integrated the footage into the presentation, ran through it a couple times, then wandered off to meet my hosts for happy hour, and then on to the screening room for the presentation. I had two full hours in a beautiful screening room– perhaps the most beautiful setting of any YERT screening to-date! I ran through a handful of film chapters, combined with short films, brief video clips, photos and stories. The audience (probably about 25 people) was delighted by the results and I stayed for a while afterwards meeting with viewers who were eager to offer their support and assistance. I’m still busy following up on all those leads as I write this…

EPA and Berkeley
The next big event was a lunchtime presentation at the EPA in San Francisco. I shared stories and videos with the employees there, and made a few contacts with scientists who may be able to help us fact-check elements of the film. Then I drove over towards Berkeley for a private presentation at the home of YERT fans and family Erin and Dio. We had over 20 people that evening, and once again the response was overwhelmingly positive. People laughed and smiled and reflected and talked about what they saw.

Green Festival
I spent the remaining days connecting with friends in San Francisco, including a visit to the SF Green Festival, where I met up with YERT friends Joey Shepp (green new media consultant/entrepreneur - http://www.joeyshepp.com/ ), Theo Chocolate, Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and a few others. I also found a couple of new things that I felt were worth sharing with you: DogFlushies.com sells water-soluble dog poo baggies that you can flush down your toilet after walking your dog. Amazing. And Rentalic.com, a website that lets you rent items that you own (or want to borrow) (like lawn mower, vacuum cleaner, garden tools, video projector, or other tools that you may use once in a while) for a small fee– helping people do more with less consumption. Everything else was green and interesting, but didn’t jump out like Rentalic and DogFlushies.

Presidio Green MBA Friends and More
I also want to give a shout out to Ali Hart and Ted Ko from the Presidio Sustainable MBA program for helping to spread the word about YERT throughout California. They were instrumental in getting the Sony presentation set up and continue to be thoughtful inspirations and sounding boards for YERTy ideas as they surface. And I also want to thank Damien Somerset (http://Zaproot.com and http://ShiftLogic.org) for more great connections and helpful brainstorming in Los Angeles.

Wrap-up
It is difficult to put into words the support and encouragement– not to mention the joy– that I felt and received from enthusiastic old and new YERT fans during this recent adventure. It put wind into the YERT sails and gives us a good feeling that the film to which we have (yourselves included) dedicated so much time, money, blood, sweat, tears, will make a powerful difference in the lives of those who experience it. All we need to do is finish it up and get it out there– and that will surely come in the months ahead.

ChicoBags for Sale!
We’re still low on funds and need thousands to properly finish the film. Please consider a tax-deductible YERT donation this holiday season: http://www.yert.com/donate.php . A healthy, YERTy planet may well be the best gift you can give to your children. We are also sitting on an inventory of nearly 300 YERT ChicoBags, and would love to sell them to continue funding the film. They make great holiday gifts (and gift WRAPPERS) — please check them out and buy a few at our online store: http://www.yert.com/shert_shop.php .

Thank you all for your continued enthusiasm and support for YERT and our planet. It’s going to get more and more interesting as these days pass…

YERTfully Yours,
Mark (and Ben and Julie!)
team@yert.com

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October 21, 2009 by Mark.

YERT will be applying for a Webby award this year– but first need to raise $255 in donations for the application fee. Can you help?

To donate, go to http://www.yert.com/donate.php

We traveled to all 50 states in one year to document fun and uplifting stories about sustainability across the country. You’ve contributed thousands of dollars to keep us afloat. Now we’re working hard to get more eyeballs on the project to expand support for the feature film! One way we hope to do that is to apply for a Webby award (like a Grammy, but for the web). If nominated, we’ll get thousands of new visitors to the site, many of whom will walk away with a different perspective about the environmental movement. If we WIN, then thousands more will see how serious we are about having fun with sustainability.

We think we’ve got the right stuff to get nominated, and even to win– we just need some funding help in order to apply. $255 of funding to be exact.

Can you contribute $10 to help us change the public’s perception of the environmental movement? To introduce YERT to thousands of new eyeballs?

To donate, go to http://www.yert.com/donate.php

Thank you for your continued support!

Humbly Yours,
Mark, Ben, and Julie (The YERT Team)

(To learn more about the Webby Awards, click here: http://www.webbyawards.com . We’ll be applying in the Online Film and Video category for Documentary:Series.)

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September 28, 2009 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

Thanks to some extraordinary efforts by Ben and our trusty new editor Scott Irick, we have submitted a rough cut of the YERT feature film to Sundance. It is a milestone and a launching pad to the next round of YERT filmmaking efforts. Read on for more information…

* YERT submits feature film to Sundance Film Fest
* YERT to be featured on FireDogLake.com TONIGHT
* YERT presenting at two Bioneers conferences
* We need donation$ for music and motion graphics

YERT submits feature film to Sundance Film Fest
THANK YOU YERTIANS!! It’s true, after countless late nights (and a true all-nighter from which I (Ben) am still recovering), at 10:36pm last Thursday night, the YERT editing team rushed a relatively watchable ROUGH cut of the film out the door and through the Louisville rain to FedEx and on to the Sundance submission office in Beverly Hills - a whole 24 min. before the late submission deadline! Even a week ago, this literally looked like an impossible deadline - and now some “lucky” intern at Sundance will have the privilege of watching Ben manure-wrestling with pigs, Mark getting “faced” by a snowblower, and Julie giving birth to a conehead (albeit, an adorable, life-changing conehead). And so, this is the part of the blog where we send out an ENORMOUS THANK YOU to all our transcribers and other volunteers who worked diligently to help us comb through our mountain of footage and get this rough cut out the door. You know who you are, WE know who you are - and we are eternally grateful for all your time and care spent on behalf of YERT and the planet. It would not have been possible without all of you. But our work is just beginning, as we revise the rough cut and zero in on our final cut, we’ll need all of our wonderful YERTians more than ever so stay tuned. (A special thanks to Ange Vesco who transcribed over 30 hours of tape single-handedly!)

YERT to be featured on FireDogLake.com TONIGHT @ 8pm EST
Mark recently visited the Netroots Nation conference when it came to Pittsburgh back in August, and at the event we bumped into some folks from Firedoglake.com! They became interested in the project and to make a long story short, YERT will be featured on the front page of their blog tonight during a live “meet the ‘author’ book salon” session focused on our Dugout Dick video and also our recent efforts to get into Sundance. It will be a Q&A text chat format– go to FireDogLake.com website at 8pm EST and click on the link for Dugout Dick. It should take you to a page where you can submit questions to Mark, Ben, and Julie all about YERT. In the meantime you can see we’re queued for action at this book salon link.

YERT presenting at two Bioneers conferences
Mark (in Pittsburgh) and Ben (in Louisville) will be will be presenting all about the YERT project at their cities’ respective Bioneers events. They’ll be sharing stories from the road, YERT short films – and sneak peeks from the upcoming feature film… Catch Ben’s YERT Presentations at Louisville’s Bluegrass Bioneers event at the UofL Rauch Planetarium Friday 10/16 at 4:15pm and Saturday 10/17 at 8pm AND at Mark’s YERT Presentation at Pittsburgh’s 3 Rivers Bioneers at the Pittsburgh Project on the North Side Sunday 10/18 at 10:30AM.
Click here for more details about Ben’s presentation in Louisville
Click here for more details about Mark’s presentation in Pittsburgh

We need donation$ for music and motion graphics
The YERT submission to Sundance had almost no music in it. That’s because we need to lock down much of the video before it makes financial sense to tie music to it– and there are many more changes in store for the film. That said, once that golden hour arrives, we have several excellent musicians eager to score portions of our film and we’d like to hire them, but we don’t yet have the money. The other element that we’d like to add to our film is animation! We have some professional animators on deck, ready to go, but we need up to $9000 in the bank before we feel comfortable setting them loose.

Can you help us add music and motion graphics to our film? DONATE HERE.

And if you haven’t yet, can you send this link to friends and family, and embed the video in your blogs? YERT FEATURE FILM TRAILER

We’ll be working our tails off this fall the pull the loose ends of the film together and prepare it for viewing by audiences around the world. We couldn’t do it without your support and encouragement– thank you for believing in us and this project!

Humbly Yours,
Mark, Ben, and Julie
team@yert.com

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September 28, 2009 by Mark.

Mark will be presenting all about the project at this event - Sunday at 10:30AM. Pittsburgh Project on the North Side. Check it out!!

“This is the most important national conference in existence. If you go to one conference in your lifetime, go to Bioneers now.” ~Mark Dixon

****************************
Contact:
Maureen Copeland, 412.334.2072
mocopeland@3riversbioneers.org

Three Rivers Bioneers Conference Exposes Breakthrough Environmental Solutions – October 16, 17, & 18

World-renowned leaders - Andrew Weil, M.D. and Michael Pollan– meet local change agents to unveil solutions for healthy living, green jobs, and social justice

[Pittsburgh, PA] – September 22, 2009– The first Three Rivers Bioneers (www.3riversbioneers.org) conference takes place this October 16-18, 2009 at the Pittsburgh Project on the Northside. The Three Rivers Bioneers (3RB) conference is a leading-edge forum highlighting breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet.

As a satellite conference of Bioneers (www.bioneers.org), 3RB provides a hub for people who are hungry for change and are working to make a real difference in their local communities. Bioneers is a nonprofit educational organization hosting the national Bioneers Conference in California for its 20th year. 3RB will broadcast live fifteen visionary speakers from the national conference to Pittsburgh, including Andrew Weil M.D. and Michael Pollan. Weil is the nation’s foremost authority on holistic medicine and Pollan is author of the bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.

The Three Rivers Bioneers Conference will also feature local leaders in the areas of green jobs, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration. Among the forty local presenters will be keynote speakers Khari Mosley, Pittsburgh’s liaison for Van Jones’ organization Green for All, and Greg Boulos, Western Region Director of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA). 3RB endeavors to give residents the tools and inspiration to be catalysts for change in their own community. According to organizer, Maureen Copeland, “Combining Bioneers national speakers, with presentations from Pittsburgh’s brightest and most passionate change agents, in addition to interactive art, music, and wellness activities makes for an event to inspire and re-energize Pittsburgh for our greatest work ahead.”

Three Rivers Bioneers builds upon the success of two previous conferences hosted by the Urban Ecology Collaborative—the Green Forum and MERGE (Methods to Engage Residents in Grassroots in the Environment). Providing a space to learn, network, and reflect, 3RB is an incubator for ideas and strategies that inspire positive change. A youth studio, activist network room, and peace garden complement the daily workshops and speakers. The Pittsburgh Project (www.pittsburghproject.org), a community development center on the Northside, provides the backdrop for the 3RB conference.

To view a full list of national and local presenters, visit www.3riversbioneers.org. Registration is open and a discounted early bird rate is available until October 1st. Register at www.3riversbioneers.org/registration.

# # #

About the Urban Ecology Collaborative

The Urban Ecology Collaborative (http://www.urbanecologycollaborative.org/uec/) is a ten-city collaborative that cultivates healthy, safe and vibrant cities through collective learning and united action.

UEC does this by developing a unique multi-city network for urban ecosystem research and restoration that makes the connections to issues of social justice; combining programs in education, urban forestry, and advocacy to address common urban ecosystem issues; and creating an integrated tool-kit for sharing these strategies.

About Bioneers

Bioneers (www.bioneers.org) is a nonprofit educational organization that highlights social and scientific innovations inspired by nature and human creativity. Its acclaimed annual national conference brings together people passionate about making a difference and serves as an incubator for new strategies for just and sustainable change. Through the conference, recordings, books, a radio series, online social network and other resources, Bioneers provides the tools and inspiration to help people connect with each other and catalyze positive change in their own communities.

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September 26, 2009 by Mark.

Dear YERTians,

I recently met one of the folks working on A Sea Change and bought a copy to watch. Last weekend I sat down and watched it and was quickly charmed by the beauty of the film– and quickly saddened by its sobering message: ocean acidification due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere is turning our oceans into a hostile environment for the little shelled organisms that live in it. Here’s the website: http://www.aseachange.net

I encourage you to pop some organic popcorn this evening and sit down for an educational journey into a lesser known (but perhaps more damning than climate change) consequence of CO2 pollution from all of our silly cars and planes.

You’ll find additional details below– I’ve copied an e-mail I received from the filmmakers.

Humbly Yours,
Mark

P.S. The more I work on the YERT feature film, the more respect I have for people who assemble independent films. Please show your support by watching A Sea Change!

**************************************************
“This film is both a love letter to the planet and
an urgent plea to its citizens.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Ocean acidification is the flip side of global warming and if you have children,
grandchildren or any investment in life as we know it
continuing on this planet, this is a must-see film.”—Marin Maven

A Sea Change premiers on Sept. 26 on Planet Green, 8 pm EST. The premiere comes at the tail end of Climate Week, a week of inconclusive UN discussions on climate change. On Monday, there was a Global Wake-Up Call, citizens around the world showing their concern about climate change: 2632 events in 134 countries, so many calls to elected officials that phone lines were jammed.

But ocean acidification is still not on the table at COP-15, the December climate talks.

So, please help raise awareness about the urgency of acting to reduce carbon emissions, the effect they’re having on ocean chemistry.

Please watch A Sea Change on Planet Green, and let your friends and family know. Or invite them over to watch with you, discuss it together and take action. (You can find your Planet Green channel on their website.)

If you’d like to host a house party, just go to the Sea Change page on Brave New Theaters to sign up.

**BONUS** If you’re hosting a house party on Sept. 26 to watch Planet Green, we’ll send you a free DVD to say thanks for helping make a big splash about climate change and the ocean!

Special thanks to some friends for helping get word out about the TV premiere: Martha Stewart,350.org, 1Sky, Brighter Planet, Green Drinks NYC, Green Edge Collaborative, Oceana, We Add Up, Student Conservation Association, and Project Aware. And to our Twitter followers: a flutter of pteropod wings.

Let’s get ocean lovers and climate change activists working together for a fair, ambitious, and binding (FAB) climate treaty in December! And start a tsunami of action before COP-15!

Thanks so much for your support.

Best wishes,

AA signature001.jpg

Angela Alston

Outreach Coordinator
A Sea Change: Imagine a world with no fish
+1 718 407 0670
http://www.aseachange.net/

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