August 11, 2010 by Ben.

Speech delivered at MoveOn.org Fight Washington Corruption Rally
Louisville, KY - August 10th, 2010
by Ben Evans

I am pledging to clean up Washington because…I am a pro-life, conservative, capitalist. Strange right? Now say it with me - I am a pro-life, conservative, capitalist. Let me unpack that statement a little bit.

I am pro-life because I believe that not just human life is important and sacred but that all life is important and sacred - that we must stand humbled and awed in the face of this sacred and fabulously diverse web of life that supports and nourishes us and that we should do everything in our power to honor, protect, and support that web and all of its inhabitants. THAT is pro-life and we cannot allow our language to be hijacked by those who would restrict us to some narrow view of what kind of life is valuable.

I am a conservative because I believe in conserving our most valuable assets - our true wealth - our water, air, land, climate, and biosphere. I am a conservative because I reject the utterly rash and unforgivably radical idea that we can use our planet as humanity’s open and unregulated sewer without devastating consequences for us and all life that supports us. Conducting that kind of uncontrolled experiment on the only home we have - an experiment that we are currently carrying out at full-throttle - is the most insanely radical idea I can imagine and it flies in the face of the very word “conservative.”

And finally, I am a capitalist because I believe in the intrinsic value of natural capital - the real wealth upon which all of our seemingly important human wealth is based and without which none of this would exist. I am a capitalist because I believe in the ability of market forces to conserve and utilize this real capital wisely if, and only if, we have a truly open, accurate, transparent and distortion-free market that accounts for actual consequences and costs over all time frames. This means, among many other things, pricing carbon and adding the true and irreplaceable value of natural capital and the ecosphere to the ledger - because right now the “free-market” that we think we have could not be more distorted or backwards. Or, as noted author and economist David Korten once said to me, “What economic growth really measures is the rate at which the rich are expropriating the real resources of the poor in order to turn them into garbage at an accelerating rate to make money for people who already have more than they need.”

And so I am truly a pro-life, conservative, capitalist - and we need more of those in Washington. We can no longer allow our language to be co-opted by those who would distort and destroy it, anymore than we can allow our government to be. We need to take back Washington and remind them that they work for US. We need a government that recognizes that humanity does not live in a vacuum, that a sustainable human economy and a healthy vibrant ecosphere are not mutually exclusive but, rather, mutually essential - and we need a government that can legislate that way.

We can all do a tremendous amount as individuals in our own lives and communities to protect this planet that sustains us - and I’m definitely all for that. But there are certain essential things that only our government can do. Only our government can enforce true-cost accounting by putting a price on carbon to move us away from our dead-end fossil fuel obsession. Only our government can set renewable energy standards to allow the energy marketplace to function wisely and in our long-term best interests. And only our government can negotiate climate treaties with other nations to preserve the enduring health of our species. We need an effective government, and so long as Washington is run by those who see mowing down our forests, blowing up our mountains, and polluting our water in order to make a buck for the top tax-bracket as “economic progress”, we will not have an effective government.

BP is not a person. Goldman Sachs is not a person. Massey Coal is not a person. And yet, they have more rights than any person - without the same responsibilities. We cannot continue to live in a world run by the likes of BP, Goldman Sachs, and Massey - or we will simply not have a world to live in.

Now say it with me one more time: I am a pro-life, conservative, capitalist. And I want an honest and fair government that knows what those words REALLY mean, and acts like it.

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May 21, 2010 by Mark.

(Just pasting in a message from Dr. Volz about this upcoming event. Please spread the news widely!)

On Saturday June 5th at the Byham Theater (at approximately 6th and Fort Duquesne Blvd.) at 7pm the award winning documentary Gasland will be shown. Doors will be open by around 6pm—-I am sending the email out with a poster so that each of you can also send information to your networks, members and friends about this important event. There will be a panel discussion following the film that will be facilitated by the filmmaker Josh Fox and will include Myron Arnowitt (Clean Water Action); John Stoltz (Duquesne University); Dave Levdansky (State House Rep); Ned Mulcahy (Three Rivers Waterkeeper) and me –Dan Volz (Center for Healthy Environments and Communities).. If you are a group and can donate a small amount of money—even 1-200 dollars would be helpful-please contact Steve—Myron listed in the cc group from Clean Water Action. Here are their email addresses since this is such a long list—Steve Hvozdovich shvozdovich@cleanwater.org - Myron Arnowitt Marnowitt@cleanwater.org

What we most need is for all of you to as actively as possible promote this event in your newspapers—through your listserves and memberships—to friends and colleagues-etc and for YOU to ATTEND. So I have attached a flier on the film from CWA that you can resend and if you are interested in donating attached are the associated costs for your review. Hope to see you on the 5th of June in the Byham before 7—lets try to fill it up—also for those colleagues who have students—and collaborating faculty—could you please send this to student –faculty listserves at your institutions—Thanks Dan

Conrad (Dan) Volz, DrPH, MPH
Bridgeside Point
100 Technology Drive
Suite 564, BRIDG
Pittsburgh, PA 15219-3130
office phone; 412-648-8541

Cell phone; 724-316-5408

Fax; 412-624-3040

University of Pittsburgh email address; cdv5@pitt.edu

Assistant Professor, Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public Health: http://www.pitt.edu/~cdv5/

Director-Principal Investigator - Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC): http://www.chec.pitt.edu/

Director, Environmental Health Risk Assessment Certificate Program http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/interior.php?pageID=82

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March 19, 2010 by Mark.

We received this urgent request from our friends at 1Sky, and hope that you can help encourage key power players to stick up for the clean air act. Thanks in advance for your help!! ~Mark

From 1Sky:

Big Oil and Dirty Coal are on the move, and they may succeed in inserting a dangerous rollback of the Clean Air Act into a Senate climate bill outline next week! We can’t allow this giveaway to big polluters to happen — take five minutes today to call key Senate and White House leaders before 5 pm EST and urge them to protect the Clean Air Act:
· Senator John Kerry (D-MA): (202) 224-2742
· Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV): (202) 224-3542
· Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy: (202) 456-1414

After you call, use this link to report on how your calls went: http://action.1sky.org/signUp.jsp?key=1916. Thanks for standing up for the Clean Air Act!

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January 20, 2010 by Mark.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that nature’s the source of our existence, and the source of life, connection, love, and peace. It comes out in this video, from our friends at PrAna.

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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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January 8, 2010 by Mark.

YERT has given loads of presentations at colleges around the country, and with the help of some pretty smart student organizers, we’ve developed a list of tips to help make any event more popular on campus. Please feel free to use these tips in your own event!

* Reserve speaker, apply for funding, reserve room space. This should be done (at least) 3 weeks in advance if possible.
o Be sure to talk to the appropriate IT people early as well to ensure that they can be there.
* Be sure the event is on your school calendar and can be found on the school’s website
* Once you know where/when the event will be, put up posters all over campus. 11×17 is better. Post them all over. A great place is on the inside of bathroom stalls so that you have a captive reading audience!
* Make a facebook group/event and invite all your friends! Be sure to send them reminder messages a couple of days before and the day of the event.
* Get the event in the campus and local newspapers. For local papers, you usually have to send them something like 2 weeks before the day you want it in the paper.
* If you have friends at the college radio station, get them to make some plugs for you in their show.
* Same goes for friends who work for the campus tv station. Even better if you can get them to screen one of the short videos.
* Send out emails to all with links to the videos to class lists or post them in a place online (in Bowdoin’s case the student digest) where most of the student body will see it.
* Make alliances with students! Email leaders of all clubs on campus who may find YERT interesting, from religious clubs to environmental groups to film clubs and get them to spread the word. Don’t forget to e-mail lists of students who are majoring in or studying environmental areas.
* Make alliances with professors! In your own classes you can write the date on the blackboard/whiteboard before class or ask to make a quick announcement. You can also ask professors to make announcements, make a powerpoint slide they can include at the beginning of their lecture, or try to show one of the short films if it relates to something you’re covering in class (especially if it’s an environmental studies class).

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October 26, 2009 by Mark.

Hey, YERTians!

I just learned about a video project/website created by a good friend of YERT - Damien Somerset. It’s called “Shift Logic” http://shiftlogic.org/ and by the looks of it he’s got his head in a very YERTy place.

Go to the site. Sign up and submit some headlines. Then vote on your favorites and the best ones get turned into new shows that make the most of Damien’s quick humor and clever editing style.

Fun, up-beat, and smart all at the same time. Brings up the important issues while staying fun. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Cheers,
Mark

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August 24, 2009 by Mark.

I recently discovered that the YERT Logo is not easily found on the Internet. That’s right, your favorite eco video web site’s logo is tough to find. Until now. The green YERT Logo for Your Environmental Road Trip (YERT.com) is right here. Check it out below, too…

(above: new green logo for YERT.com - Your Environmental Road Trip)

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July 8, 2009 by Mark.

We interviewed Christopher Flavin during the YERT road trip. We think this is worth re-posting!…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 8, 2009

Contact: Julia Tier

(+1 202) 452.1999 x594

jtier@worldwatch.org

Worldwatch Institute Launches Initiative to Assess Agricultural Methods’ Impacts on Sustainability, Productivity

Washington, D.C.—The Worldwatch Institute is launching a two-year project to point the world toward innovations in agriculture that can nourish people as well as the planet, supported by a $1.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project will focus specifically on sub-Saharan Africa.

Currently, 1 billion people worldwide go to bed hungry each night. In the first study of its kind, the Worldwatch Institute will assess the impacts of a range of farming techniques on the environment and agricultural productivity. The project will provide stakeholders, including policymakers, farmer and community networks, and international donors, with research on practical solutions for creating sustainable food security.

Among the many innovations and approaches that Worldwatch plans to examine are:

· Adding nitrogen-fixing plants into crop rotations as a low-cost solution for enriching soils and breaking weed and pest cycles;

· Overcoming freshwater shortages with rain harvesting, efficient irrigation, micro dams, and cover cropping;

· Strengthening local breeding capacity, including the use of farmer-run seed banks and genetic markers of important crop traits;

· Tapping international carbon-credit markets to reward farmers for enriching their soils and planting carbon-sequestering tree crops;

· Involving women farmers in decision-making at all levels.

“Agricultural development is at a crossroads,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “The current crisis offers a window of opportunity for refocusing the world’s attention on food, agriculture, and rural areas, and for reestablishing food security as a global priority. We look forward to bringing Worldwatch’s signature multidisciplinary approach to this groundbreaking project.”

The day-to-day management of the project will be overseen by Worldwatch Senior Researcher Brian Halweil. “We’re thrilled to be working with the Foundation and partners to take a serious look at sustainability as well as agricultural productivity,” said Halweil. “We hope to harness the global environmental community as an ally in eliminating hunger in the 21st century, as well as the growing ranks of people in wealthy nations who see food as the way to affect the world around them.”

The project will culminate in the release of State of the World 2011: Nourishing the Planet. This 27th edition of the Institute’s widely read annual report, which tackles the most critical trends in sustainability each year, will be accompanied by an online, behind-the-scenes look at the ongoing research, which will enable farmers, scientists, government officials, and others around the world to share their perspectives regarding agricultural solutions for alleviating hunger.

“Environmental sustainability is critical to ensure the greatest, longest-lasting impact on the lives of small farmers in the developing world,” said Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “By understanding how a range of approaches affects the environment and farmer productivity, this project will help all of us create sound solutions to help farmers lift themselves out of hunger and poverty in the long term.”

The Worldwatch Institute will enlist key partner organizations to provide on-the-ground research in locations around the world, access to farmer-to-farmer networks, and knowledge of specific agricultural interventions, from irrigation and soil improvement to market development. This robust network includes World Neighbors, Ecoagriculture Partners, Heifer International, Rodale Institute, Slow Food International, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the Global Water Policy Project.

Comments Sara J. Scherr, President of Ecoagriculture Partners: “This project offers a unique opportunity for the environmental community and the agricultural development community to jointly explore new strategies and technologies to achieve universal food security while also sustaining habitats for wildlife, protecting critical watersheds, ensuring healthy soils, and helping to mitigate—rather than exacerbate—climate change.”

For more information or to interview Brian Halweil or Christopher Flavin, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org or call (+1) 202 452-1992 x594.

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February 10, 2009 by Ben.

THIS JUST IN:
YERT’s dear friend and Pittsburgh City Councilman, Bill Peduto, yesterday proposed that the City of Pittsburgh become the first city in America to be lit by LED lights. Check out the full article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette HERE and feel free to call or contact Bill and give him some major props. WAY TO GO, BILL!!

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