From manatees to koalas to pangolins, endangered wildlife was a recurring theme among 148 submissions to the 2022 One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest. Students ages 8 to 25 revealed the impact of weather extremes and plastic pollution on people, animals, and the planet, with a new note of urgency about the climate crisis in their short films.
It’s what you’ve been waiting for. . . our 2022 lineup of tide-turning films is here! All screenings are free (with a suggested $8 donation) and open to the public. Seventeen virtual events will screen during the week of March 4-13. If the Omicron surge cooperates, we will be adding up to 15 in-person events—they will be offered at the same times and days as the virtual events.
It’s time to look back and celebrate all the things we’ve accomplished together this year. Here’s 2021 by the numbers.
4,046 attendees at 26 film watch parties
At each of the virtual events during the main Fest Season in March and during Earth Week in April, we learned about the climate crisis, were presented with more than 250 action ideas, and pledged to take action.
Each year, the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest receives amazing short film entries from all across the U.S. The submissions are rolling in ahead of the Jan. 5 deadline, and we are preparing to evaluate them. In 2022, we are excited to announce a new prize level—“The Environmental Activism Prize”—to elevate both the young filmmakers and the organizations on the frontlines of climate change activism.
Lake Michigan, one of Chicagoland’s great treasures, is connected to the Mississippi River by a series of waterways, including the Little Calumet River, which flows through several south-side Chicago neighborhoods, carrying nearly two centuries of African American history. The African American Heritage Water Trail honors this history and the remarkable stories of African American freedom seekers and trailblazers who traveled, lived, worked, and overcame enormous obstacles around this river and its banks. Please stop right now and visit this beautiful website, where you’ll find everything you need to understand the trail and the stops along its way.
One Earth Collective (formerly Green Community Connections) and West Cook Wild Ones are holding the annual Native Tree & Shrub Sale now through Friday, Sept. 10.
A couple dozen trees and shrubs are available. According to West Cook Wild Ones Board Member Carolyn Cullen, this year’s best-selling plants so far are Wild Black Currant, New Jersey Tea, Kalm St. John's Wort and Wahoo. These versatile and attractive plants are compact enough to fit in any suburban or urban landscape and offer attractive blooms and seasonal color that will add year-round beauty to your yard. We also love them because they provide food and shelter to pollinators and other beneficial insects, birds and other wildlife.
The very first finding in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC, or simply, IPCC) August 9 report is this:
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”
I strongly suspect that this is the first time the word “unequivocal” has appeared in an IPCC report, given the IPPC’s “calibrated language” and the fact that these reports require both scientific and political consensus. Artist Alisa Singer illustrated one thread of the evidence for human-caused climate change.
The art show “Third Coast Disrupted: Artists + Scientists on Climate” was scheduled to close on Friday, Oct. 30, but will reopen Monday, Jan. 11, and continue through Friday, Feb. 19, at Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash.
After seeing the show recently, one of its artworks continues to haunt me.
Begin with this: Today, nearly 65,000 Native Americans, representing more than 100 tribal nations, live in Chicagoland—making this one of the largest urban Native American populations in the country.
Move on to this: I have lived in Chicagoland for over 30 years, and I only recently learned what I’ve just told you. For this new awareness, I credit the Cook County Forest Preserve Foundation’s October symposium, called “Racial Equity and Access to Nature.”
Like many other Oak Parkers, our family tries to live in an environmentally responsible way. We compost food waste, eat meat-free and organic, and drive electric cars. When we lived in a single-family house, we imagined installing solar panels on the roof, but it wasn't practical or, at the time, affordable. When we downsized into a condo, we faced the challenge of getting buy-in from our fellow owners to add a rooftop solar array, and the available space would have been too small to make much of a dent in our building’s electricity consumption.
