Eco-Watch

4/21/95

GREENPLANS is a PBS video documentary showing us how some countries are already moving beyond conflict and toward solutions in what we often inappropriately cast-up as environment/industry impasse. I've put together a one-page announcement. GREENPLANS is refreshing and hopeful. Watch for it! Dave.

GREENPLANS
-- A Video of Hope for Earth Day --
Dave Iverson

If you feel emotionally drained by recent events and blinded by daily American news coverage of conflict, violence, and impasse you might want to watch for an upcoming PBS video titled "GREENPLANS." In this one-hour documentary to be shown on several Western U.S. PBS stations tomorrow, producers John de Graaf and Jack Hamann search the globe for solutions to our environment/industry impasse. They set the stage by examining conflict in the Pacific Northwest over "Owls," "Old Growth" and "Logging". They ask whether better solutions might be found to what ought not have been an impasse in the first place -- since rightfully we humans should be searching for ways to make our work and our play compatible with the environment that nurtures our very existence.

In GREENPLANS, we find that solutions to our current impasse are being worked on in many places around the globe, including here in the US. But the producers were so impressed with what is happening in Holland and New Zealand that they spend most of the hour discussing the vast cultural and institutional changes wrought in those two countries after governments and the people decided to look "long-term" toward sustainability. In both countries law, government administration, commerce, education, and the role of watch-dog groups in effective government have been changed dramatically to get beyond conflict. Near the end of the hour we return to the United States to begin to see what might be done here. Despite recent events here in the U.S. we can find hope to get beyond impasse, and that hope is found by engaging people in the process of both defining a sustainable future and developing means to get there.

GREENPLANS can be seen in the San Francisco, Seattle, and Idaho PBS markets around earth day. The schedules are as follows:

GREENPLANS is also to be a centerpiece for an upcoming "Environmental Film Festival in the Nations Capital." It be shown at 6:30 PM May 8th at George Washington University, with introductions by US Ambassadors from both Holland and New Zealand.

Finally, GREENPLANS will be featured at President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development meeting in late-April in San Francisco.

GREENPLANS, a video produced by John de Graaf (an independent producer affiliated with KCTS Seattle (PBS)) and Jack Hamann (a CNN correspondent/producer also based in Seattle). It can be obtained from
THE VIDEO PROJECT, Oakland, CA. (1-800-475-2638 (1-800-4-PLANET))
for about $80/copy government rates. Or ask your local PBS station to show GREENPLANS in your area.

Also: "Greenplans: Greenprint for Sustainability" is a new book by Huey Johnson, Univ. of Nebraska Press, now available in many bookstores.

Also: Green Plans: The Web site.

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