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Buffoonery abounds in Imago Theatre’s deep-thinking ‘Mission Gibbons’

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024

Literally and hallucinogenically, “Mission Gibbons” is a trip. Specifically, a time-trip. After a trio of stoned backpackers cross paths with a clan of cavemen, the present daytrippers must forge an anachronistic alliance with the burly Stone Agers to stave off the apocalypse. Carol Triffle, co-founder of Imago Theatre, wrote and directs this absurdly enjoyable play, comically couching very real environmental concerns.“Mission Gibbons” runs through April 27 in the Southeast Portland performance space.The show:The minds behind the anthropomorphic-movement shows “ZooZoo” and “Frogz” have been on a creative roll throughout and despite the COVID pandemic. Imago co-founder Jerry Mouawad has produced an opera-theater piece, a comedy set in a roomful of rhinos, and a dreamy dive into insomnia (last fall’s “My Bedroom Is an Installation”).Triffle’s metaphysical musical, “Where’s Bruno?” opened about a year ago.“Mission Gibbons” isn’t as abstract as many of Imago’s past works. Still, Triffle said, “It’s hard to categorize. It’s definitely a play, but there are a lot of songs in it so you could almost call it a musical, but there’s more talking than singing.”Tragicomedy might be the best descriptor, she said — leaning harder into the humor.“It’s funny, but it’s also very deep at some points, when the cavemen actually talk about what’s going to happen to the world if they don’t find a plan to help it. And all the plans are sung,” Triffle said. “It’s really sad when you think about it, but then the sadness comes through as absurd or funny.”The post-Jurassic-World Triffle creates is kinetic. However, don’t expect the animal-inspired pantomime and dance maneuvers of “ZooZoo” and “Frogz,” though several actors in “Mission Gibbons” have appeared in those shows, and are trained in the Jacques Lecoq technique of theater movement.“There is an underlying basis of physical theater in it, but it’s not anthropomorphic in this play,” said Triffle.Buffoonery abounds. From the rough-and-(almost)-tumble way the hikers attempt to scale the mountain (a massive set-piece by Alex Meyer) to some Stone Age slapstick from Caveman Ueh (Kyle Delamarter), it’s go-time from curtain up.Carol Triffle is a playwright, director and co-founder of Imago Theatre in Portland. April 9, 2024.Beth NakamuraWho’s who:The six actors in “Mission Gibbons” have all worked with Imago before — and it shows. Throughout the opening night performance, cast members fiercely maintained their commitment to Triffle’s journey, and the exaggerated quirks of their characters.Anne Sorce, playing hiker Anna, seemed to be channeling Molly Shannon’s “Saturday Night Live” goofball Mary Katherine Gallagher by creepily, hilariously never breaking eye contact with the audience as she delivered every line.Anna even leaned in to sniff Caveman Ueh’s armpits.“Mmm. You smell like dirt. Fresh dirt.”What’s the Big Idea?“All of my plays have an underlying theme of ‘We gotta fix something,’” said Triffle. “Whenever I write, I start writing and then if something pops out at me and it starts feeling like I shouldn’t go there, then I go there. I don’t know why, but that’s been my life, for writing and for watching theater.”Lately, buried under the avalanche of bad news — “everything is a catastrophe, global warming or some other catastrophe is in every newscast” — Triffle felt helpless. Things were “getting to the point of ‘I want to do something, but I don’t know what to do,’” she said.She penned this play to give people ideas to consider how to change the future now. Absurdism is Triffle’s imaginative avenue into environmentalism. That mountain? It’s named Mount Plastic. We and the hikers learn it’s not a landform; it’s a landfill, made mostly of garbage.“I never realized how much plastic I used until I started doing this play,” Triffle said. “I do recycle but I don’t recycle all the plastic. (The play) hopefully just makes you think about that.”Triffle said that her mountain of pollution is meant to mirror the mass of plastic debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, floating between the coast of California and Hawaii.The messaging here is unabashedly unsubtle. But absurdism isn’t a wink and a nudge; it’s a slap and a tickle. Triffle generously swirls eco-activism with song, sci-fi twists and cheeky references to the opening scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the goriest scenes from “Cocaine Bear.”Listen for:Music is a big element of this story. The tagline for the show is, “The time has come to listen to the cavemen sing.”“Anytime there is a ‘message’ they’re singing about it,” Triffle said. “I wrote the play and lyrics. Kyle did all the music composition.”Delamarter’s Cro-Magnon crooner Ueh belts out a couple of pop ballads that would shuffle nicely into a “Songs to Sing in the Shower” Spotify playlist.In the final number, as the cavemen mix harmonies with in-sync choreography, audiences may be witnessing Earth’s first boyband.Because they pre-date The Monkees.Line of the night:“You don’t have to be sad. It’s not opera!” shouts hiker Tina (Amy Katrina Bryan) near the optimism-fueled end of “Mission Gibbons.”What should audiences take away from the play?“You can walk away thinking and you can walk away laughing,” Triffle said. “We’re trying to maybe just help a little, and if everybody helps a little, maybe it will be a lot.”“Mission Gibbons”When: Continues 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through April 27.Where: Imago Theatre, 17 S.E. Eighth Ave.Tickets: $23; www.imagotheatre.com.— Lee Williams, for The Oregonian/OregonLive

The tragicomedy by Carol Triffle, Imago co-founder, mixes eco-activism with absurdity as modern backpackers encounter a clan of cavemen.

“Mission Gibbons” runs through April 27 in the Southeast Portland performance space.

The show:

The minds behind the anthropomorphic-movement shows “ZooZoo” and “Frogz” have been on a creative roll throughout and despite the COVID pandemic. Imago co-founder Jerry Mouawad has produced an opera-theater piece, a comedy set in a roomful of rhinos, and a dreamy dive into insomnia (last fall’s “My Bedroom Is an Installation”).

Triffle’s metaphysical musical, “Where’s Bruno?” opened about a year ago.

“Mission Gibbons” isn’t as abstract as many of Imago’s past works. Still, Triffle said, “It’s hard to categorize. It’s definitely a play, but there are a lot of songs in it so you could almost call it a musical, but there’s more talking than singing.”

Tragicomedy might be the best descriptor, she said — leaning harder into the humor.

“It’s funny, but it’s also very deep at some points, when the cavemen actually talk about what’s going to happen to the world if they don’t find a plan to help it. And all the plans are sung,” Triffle said. “It’s really sad when you think about it, but then the sadness comes through as absurd or funny.”

The post-Jurassic-World Triffle creates is kinetic. However, don’t expect the animal-inspired pantomime and dance maneuvers of “ZooZoo” and “Frogz,” though several actors in “Mission Gibbons” have appeared in those shows, and are trained in the Jacques Lecoq technique of theater movement.

“There is an underlying basis of physical theater in it, but it’s not anthropomorphic in this play,” said Triffle.

Buffoonery abounds. From the rough-and-(almost)-tumble way the hikers attempt to scale the mountain (a massive set-piece by Alex Meyer) to some Stone Age slapstick from Caveman Ueh (Kyle Delamarter), it’s go-time from curtain up.

Imago Theatre presents 'Mission Gibbons' — Carol Triffle is a playwright, director and co-founder of Imago Theatre in Portland. April 9, 2024.Beth Nakamura

Who’s who:

The six actors in “Mission Gibbons” have all worked with Imago before — and it shows. Throughout the opening night performance, cast members fiercely maintained their commitment to Triffle’s journey, and the exaggerated quirks of their characters.

Anne Sorce, playing hiker Anna, seemed to be channeling Molly Shannon’s “Saturday Night Live” goofball Mary Katherine Gallagher by creepily, hilariously never breaking eye contact with the audience as she delivered every line.

Anna even leaned in to sniff Caveman Ueh’s armpits.

“Mmm. You smell like dirt. Fresh dirt.”

What’s the Big Idea?

“All of my plays have an underlying theme of ‘We gotta fix something,’” said Triffle. “Whenever I write, I start writing and then if something pops out at me and it starts feeling like I shouldn’t go there, then I go there. I don’t know why, but that’s been my life, for writing and for watching theater.”

Lately, buried under the avalanche of bad news — “everything is a catastrophe, global warming or some other catastrophe is in every newscast” — Triffle felt helpless. Things were “getting to the point of ‘I want to do something, but I don’t know what to do,’” she said.

She penned this play to give people ideas to consider how to change the future now. Absurdism is Triffle’s imaginative avenue into environmentalism. That mountain? It’s named Mount Plastic. We and the hikers learn it’s not a landform; it’s a landfill, made mostly of garbage.

“I never realized how much plastic I used until I started doing this play,” Triffle said. “I do recycle but I don’t recycle all the plastic. (The play) hopefully just makes you think about that.”

Triffle said that her mountain of pollution is meant to mirror the mass of plastic debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, floating between the coast of California and Hawaii.

The messaging here is unabashedly unsubtle. But absurdism isn’t a wink and a nudge; it’s a slap and a tickle. Triffle generously swirls eco-activism with song, sci-fi twists and cheeky references to the opening scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the goriest scenes from “Cocaine Bear.”

Listen for:

Music is a big element of this story. The tagline for the show is, “The time has come to listen to the cavemen sing.”

“Anytime there is a ‘message’ they’re singing about it,” Triffle said. “I wrote the play and lyrics. Kyle did all the music composition.”

Delamarter’s Cro-Magnon crooner Ueh belts out a couple of pop ballads that would shuffle nicely into a “Songs to Sing in the Shower” Spotify playlist.

In the final number, as the cavemen mix harmonies with in-sync choreography, audiences may be witnessing Earth’s first boyband.

Because they pre-date The Monkees.

Line of the night:

“You don’t have to be sad. It’s not opera!” shouts hiker Tina (Amy Katrina Bryan) near the optimism-fueled end of “Mission Gibbons.”

What should audiences take away from the play?

“You can walk away thinking and you can walk away laughing,” Triffle said. “We’re trying to maybe just help a little, and if everybody helps a little, maybe it will be a lot.”

“Mission Gibbons”

When: Continues 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through April 27.

Where: Imago Theatre, 17 S.E. Eighth Ave.

Tickets: $23; www.imagotheatre.com.

— Lee Williams, for The Oregonian/OregonLive

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

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US military bases teem with PFAS. There’s still no firm plan to clean them up.

Excessive levels of PFAS have been detected at 80 percent of active and decommissioned military bases

In 2016, Tony Spaniola received a notice informing him that his family shouldn’t drink water drawn from the well at his lake home in Oscoda, Michigan. Over the course of several decades, the Air Force had showered thousands of gallons of firefighting foam onto the ground at Wurtsmith Air Force Base, which closed in 1993. Those chemicals eventually leached into the soil and began contaminating the groundwater. Alarmed, Spaniola began looking into the problem. “The more I looked, the worse it got,” he said. Two years ago, his concern prompted him to co-found the Great Lakes PFAS Action network. The coalition of residents and activists is committed to making polluters, like the military and a factory making waterproof shoes, clean up the “forever chemicals” they’ve left behind. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of nearly 15,000 fluorinated chemicals used since the 1950s to make clothing and food containers, among other things, oil- and water-repellent. They’re also used in firefighting foam. These chemicals do not break down over time, and have contaminated everything from drinking water to food. Research has linked them to cancer, heart and liver problems, developmental issues, and other ailments. The U.S. Department of Defense, or DOD, is among the nation’s biggest users of firefighting foam and says 80 percent of active and decommissioned bases require clean up. Some locations, like Wurtsmith, recorded concentrations over 3,000 times higher than what the agency previously considered safe. Today, the EPA considers it unsafe to be exposed to virtually any amount of PFOA and PFOS, two of the most harmful substances under the PFAS umbrella. Earlier this month, it implemented the nation’s first PFAS drinking water regulations, which included capping exposure to them at the lowest detectable limit. As of April 19, the agency also designated these two compounds “hazardous substances” under the federal Superfund law, making it easier to force polluters to shoulder the costs of cleaning them up. Meeting these regulations means that almost all of the 715 military sites and surrounding communities under Defense Department investigation for contamination will likely require remediation. Long-standing cleanup efforts at more than 100 PFAS contaminated bases that are already designated Superfund sites, like Wurtsmith, reveal some of the challenges to come. “The heart of the issue is, how quickly are you going to clean it up, and what actions are you going to take in the interim to make sure people aren’t exposed?” said Spaniola. A sign warning hunters not to eat deer because of high amounts of toxic PFAS chemicals in their meat, in Oscoda, Michigan. Drew YoungeDyke, National Wildlife Federation via AP In a statement to Grist, the DOD says its plan is to follow a federal clean up law called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA, to investigate contamination and determine near- and long-term clean up actions based on risk. But many advocates, including Spaniola, say the process is too slow and that short-term fixes have been insufficient. The problem started decades ago. In the 1960s, the Defense Department worked with 3M, one of the largest manufacturers of PFAS chemicals, to develop a foam called AFFF that can extinguish high-temperature fires. The PFAS acts as a surfactant, helping the material spread more quickly. By the 1970s, every military base, Navy ship, civilian airport, and fire station regularly used AFFF. In the decades that followed, millions of gallons flowed into the environment. According to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, or EWG, 710 military sites throughout the country and its territories have known or suspected PFAS contamination. Internal studies and memos show that not long after 3M and the US Navy patented the foam in 1966, 3M learned that its PFAS products could harm animal test subjects and accumulated in the body. In a 2022 Senate committee hearing, residents from Oscoda testified about the health impacts, such as tumors and miscarriages, from the PFAS contamination at Wurtsmith. In 2023, Michigan reached a settlement after suing numerous manufacturers, including 3M and Dupont. Today, thousands of victims across the country are suing the chemical’s manufacturers. While some organizations and communities have tried to hold the military financially responsible for this pollution — farmers in several states recently filed suits in the U.S. District Court in South Carolina to do just that — the DOD says it’s not legally liable. Congressional pressure on the Pentagon to clean these sites has been growing. In 2020, National Defense Authorization Acts required it to phase out PFAS-laden firefighting foam by October, 2023. Since passing that law, Congress has also ordered the department to publish the findings of drinking and groundwater tests on and around bases.Results showed nearly 50 sites with extremely high levels of contamination, and hundreds more with levels above what was then the EPA’s health advisory. Following further congressional pressure, the military announced plans to implement interim clean-up measures at three dozen locations, including a water filtering system in Oscoda.According to a report by the Environmental Working Group, it took an average of nearly three years for the Department of Defense to complete testing at these high-contamination sites. It took just as long to draft stopgap cleanup plans. 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Activist wins Goldman prize for effort to clean up California trucking and railway sectors

Andrea Vidaurre helped persuade regulators to adopt rules that will improve air quality for millions in one of US’s smoggiest areasA grassroots organizer from one of the US’s smoggiest communities has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful campaign to clean-up California’s trucking and railway sectors.Andrea Vidaurre from Inland Empire, a sprawling metropolitan region in southern California, helped persuade state regulators to adopt two historic transport regulations that will improve local air quality for millions of people – and accelerate the country’s transition away from greenhouse gas spewing vehicles. Continue reading...

A grassroots organizer from one of the US’s smoggiest communities has been awarded the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activists, after leading a successful campaign to clean-up California’s trucking and railway sectors.Andrea Vidaurre from Inland Empire, a sprawling metropolitan region in southern California, helped persuade state regulators to adopt two historic transport regulations that will improve local air quality for millions of people – and accelerate the country’s transition away from greenhouse gas spewing vehicles.Vidaurre, 29, was compelled to act after the once picturesque region, where she was born and raised, was transformed into an inland port and trucking hub connecting the busiest shipping container ports in the country – Long Beach and San Pedro (Los Angeles) – with thousands of sprawling warehouses that operate 24/7. 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To date, the prize has recognized 226 winners from 95 countries, some of whom have gone on to become heads of state and Nobel Prize laureates.skip past newsletter promotionOur US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThis year’s other winners are: Indigenous activists Nonhle Mbuthuma and Sinegugu Zukulu, who halted destructive seismic testing for oil and gas off South Africa’s Eastern Cape; Alok Shukla, who led a campaign in India that saved 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forests from coal mining; Teresa Vicente, who led a grassroots campaign to save Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon from collapse; Marcel Gomes, whose international campaign linking beef from the world’s largest meatpacking company to illegal deforestation in Brazil prompted six major supermarket chains to stop stocking JBS products; and Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, whose victory against a proposed coal mine in Queensland set a legal precedent for First Nations people in Australia.“These seven leaders refused to be complacent amidst adversity, or to be cowed by powerful corporations and governments. 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For Murrawah Johnson, the impacts of the climate crisis and the destruction of land to mine the fossil fuels that drive it are more than simple questions of atmospheric physics or environmental harm.“What colonisation hasn’t already done, climate change will do in terms of finalising the assimilation process for First Nations people,” the 29-year-old Wirdi woman from Queensland says.“[It is] totally destroying our ability to maintain a cultural identity, cultural existence and to be able to pass that on.”Johnson is one of seven global winners of the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism – described as the Nobel for the environment movement - announced at a ceremony in San Francisco.The Waratah coalmine would have destroyed the nearly 20,000-acre Bimblebox Nature Refuge. Photograph: Malcolm PatersonShe’s honoured, she says, to be in the company of campaigners who waged many of Australia’s most influential environmental battles, from blocking sandmining on K’gari to fighting uranium mining in Kakadu and saving Tasmania’s Franklin River from damming – a campaign that led to the formation of the Australian Greens.Johnson is recognised for her role as a co-director of Youth Verdict – a group that won a landmark legal case in Queensland to block a major coalmine backed by the mining magnate and politician Clive Palmer.Palmer’s Waratah Coal planned to dig up a nature refuge to mine and sell about 40m tonnes of coal a year from the Galilee basin.Youth Verdict secured the first “on country” hearing in Queensland’s land court to hear evidence from Indigenous people.But the case was also the first to test the state’s new Human Rights Act, successfully arguing that the emissions from burning the coal would limit the rights of First Nations people.Waratah Coal withdrew its appeal last February and, two months later, the Queensland government blocked the mine.But Johnson, a mother of one with a second child on the way, had already been campaigning for the rights of her people against the climate crisis and fossil fuels for almost a decade.Johnson is a mother of one with another child on the way. Photograph: Goldman environmental prizeJohnson was a youth spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou family council that had fought unsuccessfully against the development of one of Australia’s most controversial resource projects, Adani’s Carmichael coalmine.She remembers a community meeting in front of Adani’s lawyers and hundreds of Indigenous people in 2014 when she was asked to speak to represent young people after those gathered were handed an “information package” about the project.Flowers in the Bimblebox Nature Refuge. Photograph: Malcolm Paterson“I was 19 at the time and I said, ‘Where’s the environmental impact statement?’ – is there anything about the environmental impacts,” she says.skip past newsletter promotionOur Australian morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“You want us to make a decision to essentially give our consent to this project but you’re withholding the facts of the impacts to our country.”Johnson has always been surrounded by strong Indigenous advocates in her family.The fight to avert the climate crisis, she says, is a clear continuation of Indigenous Australians’ battle for recognition and the ownership of their land and retention of their culture, stories and totems.“This is really about course-correcting the injustice that’s been done to us starting from the declaration of terra nullius and understanding that there’s still a way to be a productive and economically viable society that doesn’t depend on destroying country, dispossessing people of their land and their culture – homogenising people and putting the rest of the world at threat.”As well as the direct physical impacts of resources projects – such as mines damaging sacred sites or sea level rise inundating burial grounds – Johnson says the effects of climate change on the fabric of Indigenous beliefs can be profound.Birds at home in the nature refuge. Photograph: Malcolm PatersonJohnson is Wirdi woman from the Birri Gubba nation and her totem animal is the goanna.“Other groups have other totems that are more vulnerable to climate change,” she says.“We’ve already taken a huge loss to biodiversity due to colonialism, through the pastoral industry especially. Hopefully the goanna can be adaptive, but that does not necessarily apply to [other totems like] crocodiles or turtles.“What happens when a whole species is disappeared from climate change? How do our people then identify? Because it is how they relate to everyone around them. How do you find your place or navigate the world.“When I say our cultural survival is on the line, that’s what I’m talking about.”Wild flowers bloom. Photograph: Malcolm PatersonFighting against the might and influence of the fossil fuel industry is hard enough. Johnson has taken this on while also carrying the fight of First Nations people already dispossessed of their land, and the legacy of trauma that comes with it.She wants Youth Verdict to become a vehicle for First Nations people to assert their rights and push for acknowledgment whether that is in legal courts, or in the courts of public opinion.“It can be a lonely place and you find yourself asking what’s it all for. But I have to remind myself that sometimes the work needs to be done … because it’s just the right thing to do.”

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Coral reef 100 miles off the Texas Gulf Coast is doing better than others facing global coral bleaching event

A coral reef 100 miles off the Texas Gulf Coast is doing better than others that are facing the 4th global coral bleaching event. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), coral bleaching happens when corals are stressed by changes in conditions like temperature, light, or nutrients. Bleached coral is more susceptible to […]

Flower Garden Banks National Marine SanctuaryA healthy coral community in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, located off the coast of Galveston.A coral reef 100 miles off the Texas Gulf Coast is doing better than others that are facing the 4th global coral bleaching event. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), coral bleaching happens when corals are stressed by changes in conditions like temperature, light, or nutrients. Bleached coral is more susceptible to disease. The depth of the Flower Garden Banks Marine Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico has helped the reef avoid the extreme bleaching present in other areas in the nation. The reef is almost sixty feet deep in the shallowest parts of the reef. By comparison, reefs like the Florida Keys can be as shallow as 5 feet in some areas. Michelle Johnston is the Sanctuary Superintendent for the Flower Garden Banks. She said shallow reefs have a harder time with rising ocean temperatures. “That’s not to say that we don’t get bleaching,” she said. “We do, and we had a moderate amount of bleaching last summer, but nowhere near the extent of what was seen in the Florida Keys.” Coral bleaching was first observed in the 1980s. The NOAA has recorded and monitored significant damage to coral reefs since 2000 through the Coral Reef Watch, who then records global coral bleaching events. A coral bleaching event from 2014 to 2017 is now considered the longest, most widespread and damaging event on record. Johnston said some researchers are looking into light therapy and ways to artificially cool down water near the reefs, like bringing in a hose to manually pump cooler water near reefs. “Some ideas that maybe ten years ago seemed crazy don’t seem so crazy anymore,” she said. Aquariums like Moody Gardens are working to help coral reefs keep up with climate change. Johnston said some corals are more resistant to heat than others, and the coral lab at Moody Gardens has a small sample size of corals to study that. According to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, El Niño can increase the risk of coral bleaching. El Niño usually brings warmer, drier summers. Hurricanes on the other hand can sometimes bring benefits to reefs. Two thirds of the U.S., all of Eastern Mexico, and a small part of Canada’s watershed flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River Basin alone accounts for the largest portion, according to the NOAA. Kelly Drinnen, the Acting Education Coordinator for the Flower Garden Banks, said this can bring muddy water to the gulf. “We have seen very large storms like hurricanes that hit the Texas-Louisiana coastlines that muddy water that contains who knows what,” she said. “… even if it’s not sediments in the waters and possible pollutants, the freshwater influx changes things that are offshore every once in a while.” However, Drinnen said some storms like Hurricane Rita have actually prevented bleaching events. Michelle Johnston said smaller tropical storms can serve as a way for the ocean to clean itself. “I was told once that hurricanes are kind of like nature’s way of air conditioning, you know, it churns stuff up and cools it down,” she said. The NOAA recommends traditional environmental efforts like reducing water and electricity usage, recycling, and disposing of trash responsibly to support aquatic ecosystems. Michelle Johnston said activism, going to scuba events, and visiting local aquariums can also go a long way. “This place really is a national treasure. It is a safe haven for wild corals,” she said. “… The fact that we have such a healthy ecosystem, and a place where corals are still thriving, and fish communities are thriving, is something that’s rare in this day and age.”

Activism

Climate

Education

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Among Giants

Among Giants begins three years into the McKay tree-sit- a response to Green Diamond Resource Company’s clearcutting of redwood forests. Atop his tiny platform a hundred feet up in the ancient redwood canopy, Farmer must battle the elements and avoid isolation as he fights for a sustainable future. The film uses a restrained verite style that reflects the pace of life in the tree village. As Farmer outlasts a vicious storm, counts the rings on a felled tree, and trumps through a recent clear cut, the film asks questions about what it means to follow one’s beliefs and make a difference in the world.

Forests

Activism

Nature

Between Clouds and Glass

A look at the monumental problem of bird collisions in Chicago, the deadliest city for birds, just ahead of Houston and Dallas. According to scientists, what happens in Chicago can affect bird populations across North America. As many as one billion birds die each year in the United States due to building collisions, but there are people who care and work hard to change this.

Family

Conservation

Activism

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Music

Activism

Climate

The Great Divide

Twenty minutes outside of Visalia, amidst the seemingly endless rows of citrus trees, Yolanda Cuevas packs enchiladas with shredded chicken for her husband Benjamin, their adult daughters and two teenaged grandchildren in her modest single-story home. Their house is the first one off the main drag, one of 83 lining the two crumbling roads that comprise the tiny town of Tooleville. Yolanda must wash the tomatoes for the salsa first in the sink and then again with a splash of clean water from a 5-gallon jug. The process is arduous, and though she’s resigned to do it, she’s not happy about it. Along with Tooleville’s several hundred other residents, Yolanda’s family has survived on bi-weekly delivery of water to their homes for the past 12 years. It’s an annoyance for the family, and it’s expensive for the State of California, which has been paying for the replacement water since the discovery of Chromium-6 (the same chemical featured in Erin Brokovich) in the water. The simpler solution would be to consolidate the town’s water system with that of its larger, affluent neighbor to the west, Exeter. And for this purpose, Yolanda has become a reluctant activist, attending community meetings in Tooleville and lobbying for consolidation at Exeter’s city council meetings under the expert guidance of Pedro Hernandez, an organizer with the Leadership Counsel. While Exeter has resisted the consolidation since it was first proposed, organizers like Pedro feel that this could be the year Exeter finally succumbs to the growing community pressure and brings Tooleville into the fold. The decision will echo around the Central Valley and across the state, as hundreds of similar community water systems find themselves in a nearly identical predicament.

Water

Activism

Documentary

Wake Up People!

Environmental activists have been camping in Sodros for more than four months with the purpose of stopping the trees from being cut down. In the past few days Chinese company CRBC workers have been showing up at the site accompanied by the police and gendarmerie forces. The activists have been requesting to see the permits and the documentation for the work they are planning to conduct from the CRBC workers. The CRBC workers haven’t shown any of the permits. Also, the work has begun without a construction board being clearly visible, which is mandatory by law.

Sustainable

Social Justice

Nature

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Suggested Viewing

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Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Meet the champions of the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize

Join us to forge
a sustainable future