Yesterday was a busy day getting ready for the Earth Day potluck dinner sponsored by the Winthrop Green Committee. My husband, Clif, and I agreed to help with the dinner, and on Narrows Pond Road, it was a flurry of cooking and getting things ready—quiche, chili, apple crisp, napkins, cups, pitcher for water. The list goes on, but I will stop.

For the quiche’s crust, we bought whole wheat pastry flour, made from wheat grown in Maine, and yesterday was the first time I have ever made a crust with anything other than unbleached flour. Although I prefer the taste of unbleached flour (we couldn’t find any that came from Maine), I was pleased with the results. The crust had the “heavy” taste that comes with whole wheat flour, but it was flaky, and it actually meshed nicely with the smoky cheddar cheese quiche. However, rolling the dough was not easy. This flour does not have the elasticity of unbleached flour. A novice pie maker would have been saying more than a few bad words while rolling out the crust, which had a tendency to tear and stick. Fortunately, I have rolled out many, many pie crusts in my time, and I was able to produce a decent-looking crust, albeit with a few patches.

Between 25 and 30 people came to the potluck, and overall it was a success. The food was delicious—we “green beans” are good cooks. Along with what Clif and I brought there were mashed potatoes with goat cheese, a cabbage slaw featuring Maine apples; mussels; deviled eggs (one of my favorites); and lots of desserts. In fact, this potluck was dessert heavy, always a potential with a dinner where people bring what strikes their fancy rather than what they are assigned. Never mind! Dessert is good. I especially enjoyed Rose Dawbin’s pear cobbler made with the pears from a tree in her own backyard.

There were a few snafus, which inevitably come from the first time of organizing an event. If Clif and I help with next year’s Earth Day potluck dinner, we will keep them in mind. (No doubt, other little things will crop up. That seems to be the way of such things.)

After the dinner, we showed the movie Fuel, which was excellent. Really, one of the best environmental movies I have seen in a long time and one of the few that has really made me reconsider my position on an environmental matter—biofuel. Basically, the movie charts the filmmaker Josh Tickell’s personal commitment to biofuels—from the early days when it seemed like an unalloyed good thing to the present, where many environmentalists have turned against biofuels.

Tickell is still a fan of biofuels but acknowledges there is good biofuel—algae and fast-growing trees—and bad biofuel—corn. He makes a convincing case that it must be part of a green energy mix—that large mobile equipment such as tractors, trailer trucks, and planes simply cannot run on electricity. (We’re all waiting for Mr. Fusion, but until that day comes…)

The second realization I had while watching the film is that unlike the era of oil, which I hope will be ending soon, the next era (the green era?) will not have one major answer to take care of our energy needs. It will involve many components, ranging from conservation, solar, wind, geothermal, biking, walking, and yes, even biofuels. This is a radical departure from our current dependency on oil as a primary energy source. (There are other sources of fuel, but nothing is as portable and as powerful as oil.)

Finally, it struck me that right now, if we’re careful, with our current technology, we have the means to live sustainably and comfortably and reverse global warming. (Please note that by comfortably I don’t mean that we can consume mindlessly. We who live in rich countries absolutely need to conserve and control our “appetites.”) Other countries such as Germany and Sweden are showing how it can be done. Unfortunately, the oil companies have such a grip on this country that the battle for green energy will be long and hard as it involves subsidies and incentives from the government. And let’s just say that oil companies are not into sharing.

But we can do it. We have to do it. And I don’t think I’m overstating the case that it’s up to us–to me and you and the many—to be on the right side of history.

Anyway, if you get a chance, please do watch Fuel. It will boost your spirits. It will give you hope. It will encourage you to act. And, as I noted in a previous post, action encourages optimism.

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about Mark Bittman and Ted Danson, both of whom are committed to the environment and to the well-being of our planet. Danson has no patience for pessimism, and Bittman noted that “[T]here is always plenty of good work to do.” I’d like to expand on this a bit, both, in general, with the environment, and in specific, with food, which is completely twined with the environment.

Within the environmental movement, there is, as a rule, an enthusiasm for action and projects, which can include gardening, cooking, buying locally, composting, and any other number of green activities. But sometimes “Sir Doubt” comes calling, causing environmentalists to wonder just how worthwhile personal action really is as Earth continues to heat up, plastic pollutes our seas, and the fish population plummets. It really is hard to argue that things are improving overall. (The local food movement is the bright exception.) Then comes the nagging question: What good can one person do?

What difference does it make if one middle-aged woman hangs her laundry, cooks from scratch, recycles, buys locally, limits how much she drives, and tries very hard to control her penchant for adding more clutter to an already full house? If I bring my own cup and fork to the Red Barn, a very casual local restaurant, how much, really, am I doing for the environment when everyone else is using plastic forks and cups, which get tossed into the trash? I will admit that at times I feel as though I am a lone salmon swimming upstream in a culture of carelessness and waste. And, yes, sometimes it can get discouraging.

But the other night, my husband, Clif, and I watched a documentary called Escape from Suburbia, a mostly mediocre movie with a few very good flashes, one of them being Guy Dauncey, a writer, speaker, and activist whose books have been endorsed by Bill McKibben and Jane Goodall. If Sir Doubt has visited Guy Dauncey, then he has been roundly vanquished by this ebullient environmentalist. In the film, Dauncey spoke of the “layering of solutions” that must be put together, that we need all kinds of people, with many different talents, to work on the vast problems that climate change and peak oil are bringing to this planet. Then he said something that really caught my attention. That is, “action encourages optimism.”

Dauncey is right. Doing things, however small, that are good for the planet can bring a feeling of optimism, a feeling of hope that maybe, just maybe, enough people doing the right thing will actually make a difference. And what’s the alternative, really? Giving in to pessimism? Saying, oh the hell with it, let’s just trash the planet and make it unlivable for our children and grandchildren?

No, this I refuse to do. Danson, Bittman, and Dauncey words and actions are examples for the rest of us to follow. On this advent of Earth Day, I will take their messages into my heart as I continue to hang out my laundry, recycle, and do all the other myriad of little actions that are not only good for Earth but also help spread optimism, something we will especially need as the planet continues to get warmer.

So readers, I hope you have a very optimistic Earth Day filled with environmental action that extends throughout the year.

In the opinion section of today’s New York Times, Mark Bittman’s column is about Earth’s oceans, which are endangered by overfishing and acidification. The overfishing speaks for itself, and those who love to eat fish must follow the actor Ted Danson’s advice to “Be bold. Ask questions.” It means that we have an obligation to to find out which restaurants serve fish that are not being overfished, that are caught sustainably. The same, of course, is true for the fish we buy at the grocery store. Sometimes we feel foolish doing so, and indeed, in a conversation with Mark Bittman, Ted Danson acknowledges that he sometimes feels foolish, too. But we must get past this embarrassment, which can extend to other green activities, such as bringing your own cup or spoon or napkin to places that serve ones that are thrown away. After all, why should we feel embarrassed about not using things that must be thrown away? But we do, and I have. It’s a strange world we live in.

However, I am digressing. Bittman’s second point about the acidification of oceans is perhaps less well known outside of “green circles.” Simply put, the CO2 that modern societies produce in such abundance not only leads to global warming and climate change, but also creates carbonic acid in the ocean, making it, well, more acidic. This is not good news for ocean life, especially for mollusks. The acidification makes it hard for them to build their shells, and what affects them “trickles up” to other marine life. Truly, everything is connected.

The link to the conversation with Ted Danson is included in Bittman’s column. It’s only five minutes long and well worth watching. Danson’s activism and optimism are inspiring. Indeed, Danson has no patience with those who are pessimistic. I was also moved by one of Mark Bittman’s comments: “There’s always plenty of good work to do.”

Yes, there is. And what better time to keep this in mind than during Earth Week?