One of the things—along with the food and the art—that I love about New York City is the incredible diversity of people.  One time when I was visiting my daughter Dee, we were sitting at a café, and I was positively dazzled by the variety of passersby—short, tall, thin, fat, Asian, white, black, brown, men with women, women with women, men with men. There were no disapproving stares, and everyone looked as though they felt completely comfortable with themselves and with others.

“This is good,” I said to myself. “This is very good.”

I was reminded of this last week when I went to see the latest Star Trek movie. Along with the humorous bantering between Spock and Bones, the heroic deeds of Captain Kirk, and the many, many explosions, there was a scene at a space station that was an interstellar version of what I saw at that café in New York city. But along with the brown and black, there were red, green, blue, and other creatures that walked on two legs but did not resemble humans in any way. There they were, all together, serenely and joyfully going about their business, and it made me smile just to watch that scene.

Naturally, in the course of the story, the space station comes under grave danger. Readers, I am not going to give any spoilers, except to note that Kirk and company go to great lengths trying to save that station.

From its inception, Star Trek celebrated diversity, and the original show with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner featured a cast that resembled a mini-United Nations. The main crew included a black woman, a Japanese man, a Russian man,  a Vulcan, and the inimitable Scotty. In the early 1960s, this inclusiveness was nothing short of astonishing.

And of course that was the whole point. Gene Roddenberry, the original show’s creator, felt very strongly that as a species, we needed to look beyond the surface to acknowledge the dignity and worth of every person. He was a man ahead of his time, showing us the direction in which we should be headed.

In the natural world, we celebrate diversity and curse those invasive species that can overcome the natural system. Having too much of one plant or animal is usually not a good thing. The same is true for monocropping, with the potato famine in Ireland being a horrible example of what can go wrong when too much reliance is put on one vegetable. Even genetically, diversity is a very good thing, and too much interbreeding, whether with dogs or with humans, leads to all sorts of problems.

So we have plenty of examples of the value of diversity, but we seem to have trouble applying this knowledge to the various types and colors of people who live on this planet.

Nature shows us the way. So does Star Trek and other science fiction stories. New York City does, too.  Slowly, many of us are absorbing these lessons. Unfortunately, others are not. But it is my hope that a time will come, sooner rather than later, when racial and cultural diversity is, well, normal, not at all unusual, simply the way things are.

Last night, Clif and I went to Railroad Square to see the documentary Catching the Sun. This good movie was sponsored by ReVision Energy and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and as the title suggests, Catching the Sun is about solar energy. Its primary focus is the baby steps that are being taken in the United States to promote this much-needed alternative energy in contrast to countries such as Germany and China, which are whole-heartedly embracing solar energy.

Our reluctance to embrace solar energy is, of course, politically driven by oil companies who are intent on wringing every bit of profit they can from oil, coal, and gas. In turn, the money these companies contribute to politicians ensures that their voices will win out and that solar energy will be marginalized and vilified, even.

How ironic, then, that the technology for solar energy was developed in the United States during the space race. Nowadays, unfortunately, there is not much solar manufacturing in the U.S. This should not be a surprise to anyone as the United States has pretty much decided that it doesn’t want to manufacture anything.

The movie follows the green activist Van Jones, who for a short time worked with the Obama administration to promote green energy. However, Fox News decided to shred his reputation, calling him a communist and ridiculing his efforts. Sadly, Van Jones resigned under the pressure, and the Obama administration lost an eloquent voice on behalf of the environment.

Catching the Sun also follows some unemployed folks in Richmond, California, as they train to install solar panels.  The movie makes it clear that even though U.S. doesn’t manufacture solar panels, the industry can still provide lots of hands-on jobs that cannot be outsourced foreign countries.

The sun shines and shines and shines. The United States is geographically blessed to take full advantage of this nonpolluting resource. Even Maine, in its northern location, gets a lot of sun, as much as Germany does. The technology has advanced, and the price for solar panels has dropped dramatically. There is no reason to hold back.

But this country is caught in the grip of the oil companies, and at the end of the movie, Van Jones concludes that support for green energy is going to have to come from the bottom up, from states and activists. He might be right, but many states—Maine included—are not exactly committed to alternative energies. It is more than a little depressing to think of where we might be—as a country, as a state— had the political will been stronger. (Right now solar energy accounts for a very small percent of our energy use.)

Still, on we go, and on we hope. At Railroad Square, Catching the Sun was definitely preaching to the choir. But as the Reverend David Billings recently observed on the PBS NewsHour, “The choir has to practice every Wednesday.” (He was referring to the workshops on racial matters that his organization People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond hosts. And how those workshops do indeed preach to “the choir.”)

So sing, choir, sing. Let your voices be heard, and maybe one day the song will be strong enough to drown out the shrill, negative voices that so dominate my state and this country.