Current Projects

Reclaiming Sisyphus

Climate change is real and coming on fast. Switching the world to Renewable Energy (RE) is a key part reducing climate change’s impact on society. An amazing side benefit is that green energy sources are almost free once constructed. This is a small secret that today’s big gas and oil firms don’t want the public to know.

The real reason that Big Oil has not become Big Energy is that they can’t much money from renewables. Oil and gas need to be continuously pumped, refined and delivered, all of which cost money, and justifies its high price. Pumping oli is like printing money. RE, once built, provides no such income stream. Big Oil and the politicians in their pockets, use the intermittency and lack of scale of RE as reason to stick to the status quo. But the scale problems has been solved, witness that giant wind farms on land and sea, and the massive solar collectors filling the deserts of the Ameican South West. Society and grass roots organizations are doing what politicians don’t have the courage to do, and oil companies don’t have the vision to do, marching ahead one suburban rooftop solar project at time.

Hydro power is reliable but location specific. Solar can fit into any location, but only works when the sun is up and the clouds are missing. Wind cheap but intermittent. Demand is variable but predictable. Put together, this infrastructure, can provide limitless low cost energy. The remaining big problem becomes what to do when demand exceeds supply. Often, older carbon based power stations are to be kept on-line but idle, ready to fire up and fill these gaps. Big oil is quick to point out the need for traditional power sources to “overcome” the inadequacies of RE.

The missing piece in this big puzzle is energy storage. Society must find a way to store energy from RE sources when there is a surplus, and feed it back into the grid when there is a shortage. We can’t really just plug 10 million D cells into the grid.

Fortunately engineers have been working hard on this problem for quite some time. From pumping underground caverns full of compressed air, to filling giant tanks with molten salt, the solutions are both ingenious and fascinating. As incredible as these solutions sound, they are are being designed, tested and deployed. This documentary will examine a few of these projects. Without getting to technical, we’ll look at the physics that make them work. Once seen and understood, these gargantuan batteries are fascinating.

Lifting the pace from the 70s series “Connections”, this documentary will try to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. While we don’t have James Burke’s engaging personality or linguistic skills, we make up for it with stunning imagery and informative graphics, plus a peak at the minds behind the engineering. The goal is to inform and inspire the audience.

We targeting a wide range of viewers, who will hopefully leave the theater will the knowledge that we can switch away from a carbon based economy in the very near future. A state of mind very much the opposite of what the big oil marketing machine has tried to create.

Acting Together on the World Stage

The feature documentary offers tools for the creative transformation of conflict by highlighting the work of courageous theatre artists from around the world who are focusing their craft on the violence experienced in their communities. The performances in the film, some of which were enacted in acute circumstance, illustrate that theatre can be an effective resource for non-violent resistance to injustice, for the rehumanization of former enemies, and for healing in the aftermath of mass violence. Acting Together received a post-production grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and screened in over 50 venues in 15 countries in its first year. “The film presents such breadth, so much global history both known and erased, so many charged images and rich stories that to properly comment we would either have to sit mute for hours in stunned awareness—or talk until dawn.” –Professor Rena Sharon

http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/peacebuildingarts/actingtogether/documentary/

Love Our Gov

An artificial debate pitting the standard idea of liberal big government against conservative small government is raging in the USA. This is a false argument which obscures real issues. A brief example: What is the difference between one who believes in tax breaks for the development of a renewable energy industry, or for fossil fuel exploration and modernization? Same citizen tax burden in either case. When it suits our own views and purposes, we all consider our ideas, whether liberal or conservative, to reflect reasonable government. By presenting visual stories of average citizens and their interactions with government, we hope to inspire a knowledgeable citizenry that reaches beyond cynical bipartisanship and becomes involved in innovative, effective, thrifty legislation.

www.loveourgov.com