Sara Beresford is a tall talkative lady with blonde hair and a countenance that puts people at ease. Like many Americans, she’s a mom with two young kids, a husband, a minivan and a lot to juggle. She’s from Seattle. She fell in love with the man who would become her husband while getting a graduate degree in biology in the patently quiet southern college town of Athens Georgia, about an hour’s drive from Atlanta. After a stint in DC working on international climate change issues, she and her husband returned to Athens to have kids and settle down. Like many moms, Sara probably got about 4 hours of sleep last night – and probably hasn’t gotten much more sleep for weeks. But unlike many moms - she’s the director and impetus behind an environmental film festival. Her desire to use the medium of movies to communicate a host of interconnected issues that relate to her community and the planet pushes her to do something beyond most thirtysomething parents.
I meet her at 3:50am Pacific time – not my best hour. (It is 6:50am in Georgia). As we drive across the sleepy little town, Yellow school buses trundle through the gray morning drizzle like rolling caterpillars.
“I never thought I’d own a minivan,” Sara tells me as we pull up in front of a gargantuan brick building that is home to one of two high schools in Athens. The structures that make up this school are bold IM Pei-type new world architecture. Their broad angles and strong lines seem to beckon to a future full of science and technology. We walk past a few kids smoking nervously outside and enter a strange world.
Bright fluorescent lights illuminate teenagers moving in every direction. We are greeted by a teacher in an orange shirt. As she guides us through a sea of young people and a maze of hallways and stairwells, I notice all of the teachers wear orange t-shirts. (An irony considering the battle to have kids in public schools wear uniforms).
We settle in. The classroom projector begins to display FUEL. I step into the shadows with Sara to watch the kids. As a filmmaker, there is nothing more gratifying than watching as an audience watches my film – especially when, like this group of young people, that audience is completely engrossed in every frame that splashes on screen. The thing I love about teenagers is that their reactions are so genuine.
A stuttery internet connection to the secure server with the movie halts the viewing less than halfway through. The kids balk and erupt into chaos. After some failed attempts to re-establish and buffer the connection, the consensus is that “it’s like a stuck YouTube video.” we switch to questions and answers.
At first it is the boys who ask questions. “Is biodiesel more expensive?” “Are diesel cars more expensive?” “Did you film the whole movie or did you travel with people?” “How much did it cost to make the movie?” The questions aren’t unpredictable, but the air is filled with a palpable excitement. These kids are awake.
As we go back and forth, the students begin to distinguish the core issues from FUEL. They move through the ideas of sustainability, food vs. fuel, energy balance, solar, wind, even nuclear. After about thirty minutes, the room eases up and the girls begin to ask questions. They often begin with words like, “this may be a stupid question, but…” Little qualifiers, making sure they are safe. These q and a’s are a revealing and beautiful process that offers much insight into how we interact as adults. I see new hands go up. They begin to delve into the good stuff.
“Where can I find more information on this?” asks a girl with red hair in the front row. A boy a few seats away begins to speak and then he stops short and looks to me. “Go ahead,” I say, curious as to what he will say. “Well you know Ben,” he says to the girl with the red hair, “his folks have a farm with solar power and they run their car on vegetable oil and they raise their own food.” Her eyes get wide. Another girl pipes up from the second row “yeah, I went to Belgium this summer and they have totally sustainable farms there.” Boom – the room goes into overdrive. One after another questions come rapid fire. Faces are bright, eyes full of wonder. “What about India?” “How do we not use so much fuel as a country?” “Can we run our school on solar power?” They are pro-active looking at what to *do*, how to *do* it and what kind resources *doing* will require. Then a small Asian girl who has been paying close attention but saying nothing asks a million dollar question.
“What do you think our world will look like in 30 years?”
I look into their faces. My heart is beating fast. I feel sweat dripping down the back of my shirt. The room grows silent. Here is an inspired, open, aware group of teenagers who are about to walk into a world that hangs in such a delicate economic, political and environmental balance. Their faces are relatively free of the resignation and regret that beset adults. Do I sugar coat my answer? Do I sidestep the question? Or… do I tell her my honest, really brutally honest, opinion?
I remember a clip of documentary footage from the movie “Bobby” in which Senator Robert F. Kennedy speaks with a classroom full of kids.
“You know in the movie we interview Bobby Kennedy Jr?,” I ask. Some of them get the connection immediately. Others have questions in their eyes. “His father was the brother of the President John F. Kennedy who put a man on the moon. His dad was also named Bobby Kennedy and he was a senator and he was running for president…” “And he was shot!” says an African American girl from the back row, “I saw the movie Bobby!” “Right,” I continue, “Like his brother he was shot.”
“Well, about 40 years ago, Senator Kennedy went to a classroom like this one and he shared his honest opinion about the future with the students there. He told them that pollution would get so bad in our cities that people might have to wear gas masks. He explained that the climate might begin to change and we were affecting the planet in ways we couldn’t yet understand. He told them a number of things about the future that came true. And I bet not one of those kids ever forgot that visit. So I am going to give you my honest opinion. I don’t have a crystal ball and It’s not the truth – but you asked for my opinion and I’m going to give it to you.”
“In 30 years time we will be past the peak of the world’s oil. You remember the graph in the movie of oil supply versus demand? Well, the gap between what the world needs and what it demands will get bigger and bigger. Millions of people will also be without clean drinking water and the supplies of fresh water will become scarcer and scarcer. The climate will become more unpredictable than anyone imagined. Summer in Georgia may look more like winter but then it might shift back to summer. It will make growing crops and food extremely difficult. There will be food shortages the likes of which we have not seen in this century. And because whether and rainfall patterns will shift across the globe, hundreds of millions of people will lose the stability of their land and they will be roaming across continents, searching for the basic things needed for life. That is your future. That is my honest opinion about your future.”
From all over the class there is a resounding response of: “Oh, Great!” “Geez” “Whoa”
“But you are also in a unique position to begin to create solutions for that world. Everything from building farms in vertical buildings in cities to making fuel from algae to putting solar on your school.”
The students lit up and asked more questions about what specific things they could do.
“How do you know where to begin?,” asked the vocal red headed girl.
“Find something you are passionate about,” I said. “Each of you has something unique and powerful to contribute to your community. I believe that’s why we’re here. So you’ve got to look within yourself and gauge what really lights your fire. Seek out that thing, find it and cultivate it within yourself. For you it may be solar, or wind, or gardening, or organizing, or facilitating meetings, or doing facebook entries, or making movies, or designing flyers, or writing, or blogging. I don’t know. But whatever it is, it is the only truly unpredictable thing about you. Everything else is relatively predictable – you’ll probably graduate, some of you will go to college, most of you will get married, have kids, have a 9-5 job, have grandkids and die. It’s totally predictable. The only thing – and I mean the only thing that isn’t predictable – is your unique contribution to the world. That is why you must find that thing – it’s what makes your life worth living!”
After that, there wasn’t much more to say. The class ends. Some of the kids thank me and most of them stay after. They huddle in a group and begin to plan. I stand back and eavesdrop on their conversation. They speak about making a garden at the school, getting the used cooking oil and turning it into biodiesel, getting t-shirts made, finding sponsors and changing the world. They have begun their journey.
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en by Rachel Purcell
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