|
Arielle
Ford: My name is Arielle Ford. I am the Director of Publicity for both
the Spiritual Cinema Circle and our brand new sister company the Earth
Cinema Circle. My very special guest today is the host and spokesman for
Earth Cinema Circle, he is an actor and long time much awarded
environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. Ed’s commitment to the environment is
very well documented.
Currently
he is the costar of the hit HGTV series Living with Ed which looks at
the day-to-day realities of living green and his not so environmental
wife Rachelle Carson. The series has currently just finished its second
season.
Ed, how
do you think movies can make a difference for the planet?
Ed Begley, Jr.: They have
for many years made a big difference. Films have influenced the popular
culture for many years, often for the good and certainly sometimes to
detriment you, I would suggest, with films that have promoted
consumerism and excess I think that’s something that Hollywood was known
for years but now there are other things coming out of Hollywood and
elsewhere. There has been a move for some years that I have been
involved with since 1970 and many other people have joined in order to
promote other things, more responsibility with the way we purchase
things, environmental stewardship and the reason the Earth Cinema Circle
is so important because it is not time to go door-to-door with these
pressing matters, whether it be ocean pollution, the way we grow our
food, air pollution, many of wonderful issues that Earth Cinema Circle
deals with. All these things are very important then, they need to get
informed and historically people have been very well informed by
documentaries, by the kind of films that people can find at Earth Cinema
Circle. They are wonderful films and I am very proud to be part of it.
Why are
you involved?
Well, you know I got
involved because I have a long standing relationship with Gaiam and with
Real Goods, two companies that merged many years ago. John Schaeffer
(founder of Real Goods) is a friend of mine, he has been promoting
sustainability for years and then when he merged with Gaiam and it
became a wonderful relationship where he could even have further reach.
Earth Cinema Circle is the kind of opportunity I was looking for years
to have those kinds of films together in a series, in a set where people
could get them and learn about a myriad of different issues that are
important to us all and that’s what it does, it’s a great service and I
think people are really going to enjoy it.
We are
so pleased to have you as part of our team. Ed, what was the moment of
truth when you first committed to the environmental movement?
It was in 1970, it was the
first Earth Day and I just wanted to get involved, it seemed like an
important thing to do. Keep in mind what came before though; we had the
Cuyahoga River catching fire in Ohio. It’s not good when the rivers
catch fire. We had very bad air pollution that I grew up within the 50s
and 60s and by 1970 it really hadn’t got any better. So the big moment
was Earth Day. With the horrible smog in LA, I had trouble breathing as
a young man and I am not an asthmatic nor was I then and when you have
trouble breathing you are going to want to do something about it and we
did something and now look at the success. We haven’t cleaned up the air
totally in LA, but we have four times amount of cars in LA, yet we have
half of the pollution, half of the ozone and other pollutant at ground
level that are such a problem.
So we can do it. We have
climbed halfway up the mountain and with more awareness about things
like Earth Cinema Circle, we can go all the way to the top and clean up
the urban cities like LA and many other cities.
What do
you think are the top five things an individual can do that will have
the biggest impact on the environment?
There are so many things a
person can do and I urge everybody to pick the low hanging fruit. It’s
fine if you have the budget to do so, to get solar panels or an electric
car or hybrid car. Those are big ticket items, but you don’t have to run
up Mount Everest. You get to base camp, you get acclimated, you start
small and how do you do that?
The first thing you do,
you would get an energy saving light bulb, those are very efficient.
Next thing you might just get out of your car. That could mean one of
any number of things; it could mean walking more, if you live in a
neighborhood, as I do, with plenty of things to walk to. I live in a
neighborhood where there are lots of restaurants and shops and grocery
stores that I can walk to from my home.
You might ride a bike if
weather and fitness permits. You might take public transportation, if
it’s available near you and it is for many of us.
You might get an energy
saving thermostat. You might grow some fruits or vegetables in your
front or backyard, if you have a piece of dirt to call your own or if
you have a yard. If you don’t, become part of a community garden.
If there is no community
garden near you, start one. Those are five cheap and easy things you can
do that anybody on a budget can do. Anybody can afford public
transportation. Nearly anyone can afford a bicycle, a light bulb. For
those that can't afford a light bulb they have light bulb give away
programs at many utilities now. So start small and build and then you
can go from there and do some medium ticket items and big ticket items
one day.
Those
are all great suggestions and I want to add one of my favorites to it
because I read about this about a year ago: if you start unplugging
appliances that you are not using, you can also save electricity. I
tried it. I replaced my light bulbs and I unplugged all my chargers and
stuff that I don’t need everyday and it reduced my electric bill by $30
a month, just by doing those two things.
I don’t doubt that you can
do that. You can put all those vampire power appliances, vampire power
being a quite obvious term to know something that is sucking from you
and giving you nothing in return. You can put all of those on little
power strips and turn them off with the flick of a switch when you leave
the house. Or, there is a new technology called ‘green switch,’ where
you can turn off one switch, as you do in hotel rooms in Europe and
Australia, you flip a switch or pull out your hotel room electronic
keycard and it turns off everything non-essential when you leave the
hotel room, that’s available in the United States now as a ‘green
switch’ item. These are the kinds of things that Earth Cinema Circle is
promoting, energy efficiency, common sense things that anybody can do.
You learn a lot more about them in these films.
Ed,
what do you feel is the most important element of personal
responsibility for the environment? Is it recycling, energy
conservation, green building?
It’s hard to pick. It’s
like which is your favorite child? Buildings are big energy users,
because they last so long, hopefully they last a long time, but over
their life and most buildings have a very long life, they are going to
use a lot of energy. They can use a fraction of that, if you build them
right.
So there is a big one
there, but I can't neglect the notion of transportation that’s an
equally large and important one. Get out of your car, as much as
possible. What I mean by that, I mean if weather and fitness permits
ride a bike, walk, take public transportation, if it’s available near
you, or if you have to be in a car, make sure it’s the most energy
efficient and fuel efficient car. Can you it run on veggie oil? Can you
get an electric car? There are still some small neighborhood vehicles
being sold. There is an electric pick up truck that’s being sold from
Phoenix Motor Cars now. If you can't get one of those, can you afford a
hybrid car? Somehow try to get into something more fuel efficient.
Now, we have what the
Europeans have had for years we have the Smart car, which is tiny and
get 50 or 60 miles to the gallon. You can park it anywhere.
I know!
If you had a little dolly you could roll it in sideways into a half of
parking spot.
What
are some of your favorite green gadgets or tools?
My favorite green gadget
is my little solar charger. I have had them for years. Nearly all of
them had a panel that was too small to really charge a battery properly.
Now, they are much better, more efficient. They open up like a fan that
has several panels on them and they will actually charge your cell
phone. They give it a real charge. There’s also a solar backpack that
has an even larger panel if you want something larger that you could
take camping and charge your cell phone or even run your computer with
it. Those are pretty good.
My solar oven though is my
number one favorite. That’s a larger item certainly, I don’t know that
it’s really a tool, but it is a cooking tool. I make all my soups, rice,
beans, stews in that, boil my hot water or recipes out in the yard, all
free energy from the sun for my solar oven.
What's
your next Green Home Improvement project?
It’s happening right now.
I have been talking about how I took a 1936 energy inefficient house. I
made it very energy efficient or so I thought. Recently people with an
infrared gun came by and I saw all the gaps in my home. I had put great
insulation in the attic and in the walls but discovered there are spots
that we missed.
There were other problems
with the crawlspace in the house. I figured that since heat rises there
wouldn’t be big problems with the floor. I was very wrong. I was
hemorrhaging heat in the winter and cool in the summer from the
crawlspace under the house. The house was nearly an energy sieve,
despite all my best efforts. That’s being enclosed as we speak. I also
got a much more energy efficient hot water heater from AO Smith that I
am putting in right now. It’s a 95 percent energy efficient water heater
from AO Smith and a new heating and air unit that is super energy
efficient that will replace the old from a bygone era.
I have recycled denim in
the attic and then in the walls, I had them blow in cellulose. It’s a
solar house so I am making a lot of electricity in my house and with two
businesses on site we have big demand here.
I am running this business
called Begley's Best non-toxic cleaning products, that Gaiam and Real
Goods is kind enough to carry and Whole Foods is kind enough to carry.
My wife has a Pilates business. We have a camera crew with bright
lights, shooting at my house all the time and I drive an electric car
all over to all these environmental events to the tune of like 11,000
miles a year.
So, all that really will
tax the solar system which is why I need to make the house totally
energy efficient, so I don’t use even any green power from the LADWP
Green Power Program. I am stubborn, I don’t even want to use any of
that.
Ed what
kind of electric car do you drive?
It’s a Toyota RAV4, pure
electric. They were crushing them around the same time they were
crushing the EV1 General Motors cars and there was a big outcry. Toyota,
I think wisely said, OK we are not going to crush anymore (so that) the
people that have them, can keep them. I think they were smart to do
that. (With the RAV 4) it’s like the lonely Maytag Repairman nothing
goes wrong with them, they just run and run. You bring it in every
10,000 miles or whatever 7,500 miles and go, now you are good again for
another 7,500.
You
must sleep well at night with all the good you are doing in the world.
Well, I am doing it
together with friends at Gaiam and Earth Cinema Circle it’s a great
thing to be associated with and I am very proud to be in this
partnership.
Oh
that’s so great. Now, for someone just transitioning into living green,
what films and books do you recommend?
I am going to be
unabashedly self serving here. I have a book called, Living Like Ed
that’s available from Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House and
it’s a very good how-to book. There are other good green books out
there, I tell people to look in the Gaiam catalogue (or website) and see
all the wonderful books that show you all about solar, about wind, about
straw bale houses.
For
those that haven’t gotten a chance to see Living With Ed can you tell us
a little bit about the show?
It’s a show that has been
on the HGTV for a couple for years. The DVD set of Living With Ed is now
available at Gaiam. It’s a reality show about what it’s like for my poor
beleaguered wife to live with a guy who rides a bicycle to make toast.
The solar batteries give
me my power that are charged by the solar panels. Those batteries give
me power at night or cloudy day or any time, but I figured why waste
that energy when I am riding my stationary bike on a cloudy day or a
rainy day or sometime I wouldn't be out in the road actually riding my
regular bike that energy goes into the same battery. So I am using that.
It’s like Green Acres for
the new millennium. I am Eddie Albert and she is Eva Gabor and she is
interested in some things, I am not as interested in a lot of shoes or
clothes and I am interested in things working well, being practical. She
is more interested in aesthetics and we find that we meet in the middle
that we can have a drought tolerant garden and it can look good. So she
has helped me with aesthetics and I have helped her with more practical
things, so we have a house that functions very well now.
Do you
have any plans to produce or direct your own documentaries?
No documentaries at this
time. I just did a docu-play about Cesar Chavez in the LA area called,
Cesar and Ruben, about Cesar Chavez and Ruben Salazar and it was very
well received by the LA Times and LA Weekly and everybody in town. I did
that last year from August through November.
How do
you handle the frustration that must come with people being more
interested in you as an actor and celebrity, rather than as an activist,
environmentalist?
I am fortunate that I get
to do both. I get to make enough money to do what I do because of my
acting work. I get to be, I suppose enough in the public spotlight to
talk about the environment because of my acting work. It’s been a
wonderful means to an end. I certainly enjoy it on its own, but it’s
wonderful that it helps in so many ways to spread the word. It allows me
to be a megaphone, to spread the word.
|
