In Chimacum, on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula, there are probably more dairy cows than humans. It is a place where it’s common to see a 1972 Ford F-100 hard at work, way past its expiration date. Where those who own a patch of ground extend their hospitality to friends to park a trailer/bus/boat and live a while until they find a job/squeeze/studio space. Where the pie is from scratch and serving bad coffee is a sin. In Chimacum, not everyone bothers to replace their missing teeth, and that is perfectly acceptable.

It is also the place where I became a hardwired environmentalist — not because it was chic or because of yuppie guilt, but because it was a matter of survival.

I was introduced to Chimacum as a 12-year-old seventh-grader, fresh from a scholarship at a New York all-girls’ school where diplomats and old-money families sent their daughters. My father moved us back to Washington for several reasons; being closer to his family and giving us a non-urban alternative topped the list.

I never quite fit into either culture, and I split back to the city in the middle of 11th grade, feeling as if I had outgrown the country. I went on to work many jobs, in offices and restaurants and newsrooms, in New York and New Mexico. But Chimacum had seeped into my DNA. The smell of fertilizer and the close-knit community called. I returned in the early ’90s to be closer to my family, and because I couldn’t figure out where else to go.

Places like Chimacum are rich in characters and scenery, but they are not rich in jobs, so I concocted a living during my mid-20s hawking my various talents: freelance writing, PR, waiting tables, running a dating service. (I also can sing “Home on the Range” in Yiddish, but no one has ever offered to pay me for that.) When I was broke, broken up, and needing a place to live in 1995, Berry Hill Lane became the obvious answer.

I managed to scrape together a down payment on a $25,000 piece of property a mile up the rutty, rocky lane: Five forested acres that housed three tiny cabins, fashioned from reclaimed lumber and windows that used to be part of a nearby hotel. The main one, 400 square feet with a loft bedroom, a makeshift kitchen, and a rusty old woodstove, would become my home. The octagonal cabin that I packed with my children’s books and dubbed the “Regression Room” served as my office; most of my nonessential belongings ended up molding away in the third outbuilding. (Who knew ice skates could grow mold?) My monthly mortgage payment was the equivalent of what I pay for a haircut now.

It was more than enough space for me and my beagley mutt, Lucy, to dream our dreams of woods and poetry. And it was a serious education in self-reliance. There was no well on the property, and each drop of water had to be hauled in or collected from the roof. I had to pack out any garbage I created — and pay to dump it. No Berry Hill Lane resident ever received a bill from the electric company — we were off the grid. The juice that ran anything came from batteries charged by solar panels and gas generators. Forget about a toilet or bathtub or washing machine.

I traded chartreuse silk pumps for black leather Timberlands and figured out how to yield that satisfying crack-and-split from firewood rounds. Berry Hill’s resident solar-power expert, Michael “Dr. Sparks” Bittman, guided me through the process of buying and installing two panels on my roof. And my lifestyle became more a reflection of the earth’s desires than my own: The first winter, all those plants that had thrived in my last home froze into black, slimy messes because I’d let the fire die out for too long. When ice made the road too slick for driving one Christmas Eve, my truck nearly ended up in a ditch full of refrigerators abandoned by my neighbor. One time, a bear let himself in and took a big shit on my coffee table.

Ecology became personal, a matter of keeping warm, dry, safe, and clean. I stopped buying paper towels and used dishtowels and sponges instead. Propane-powered lights were on only when necessary — the more gas I used, the sooner I’d have to truck the tank to town for a refill. My “septic system” involved an outhouse, a plastic bucket with holes in the bottom, and ashes from the fireplace.

Despite the aches and worries, I loved my life. But I still felt the urban tug. Eventually, I took a job in Seattle and then, in 2005, moved to Los Angeles — a city with, among other things, an abundance of smog and a shocking lack of recycling.

In L.A., my environmentalism has shifted to a macro level. Every day, I urge millions of people to save energy.

I had come to California with thoughts of using my creative talents in the entertainment business, but that didn’t look so hot after I saw what my hardworking, poorly paid friends in the “biz” went through. So six months ago, I went to work in the corporate communications department of one of the country’s largest investor-owned utilities.

Friends were shocked that I’d taken a straight job after six years of freelancing, and that said employment was in a decidedly “unsexy” industry. I think I shocked myself even more — how could a once-blissful homesteader become a utility employee?

I wondered if I was selling out. My personal jury will always be out about nuclear power, and my new company owns an interest in the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, near San Diego. I don’t like that a lot of our portfolio comes from dirty old coal. On the other hand, I was warmed when I learned that our company’s chair was a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

I soon realized I’d be an operative working from the inside: I am paid to convince people to not buy so much of our product, to get them to conserve energy and save money.

I created a forum on our website in which customers can share ways they save energy. I’m in charge of the inserts customers receive in the mail, and it’s my mission to make energy efficiency interesting and approachable — especially for those angry and baffled by their bills. I tell them how they can earn cash when they buy an Energy Star-rated fridge or freezer, plus an extra $35 to $50 to haul away the old one. I tell them how, if each California household swapped out one regular, high-use bulb for a compact fluorescent, the total savings would be $75 million over a year. And I tell them that last year, my company purchased more than 13 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity generated by wind, solar, hydro, and other renewable sources — more than any other utility in the country.

The business rationale for urging conservation, besides greater good, is that the more electricity customers use, the more strain it puts on the infrastructure, and the more we need to maintain and create new lines, poles, generation methods, and the like. The California Public Utilities Commission sets rates, and we can’t charge more than what it costs us to procure and deliver energy. So it makes sense to work with and improve existing infrastructure, and convince people that saving money is a win-win situation.

I’ve come to realize that change comes in particles that make waves. Decisions each of us make every moment — should I bring my own cup to the coffee shop? wait the half hour for my carpool buddy, or go it alone? look for local grapes? — affect the larger picture. My intent is to help the good people of Southern California make the small, eco-friendly choices that really can change their lives.

My own life has changed a great deal since the days spent in my tiny cabin — at least on the surface. I now live in a 1947 condo with hardwood floors (and ultra-efficient light bulbs). I’m probably over my days of peeing in a tomato can on a night when it’s too cold to go to the outhouse, and I’ll be damned if I ever lose a vintage beaded dress to mold again. But I still give up a silent thanks for every bubble bath I take, for every time I blow-dry my spazzy curls into sleek submission. Now I know just how much work it takes for the earth to give me those things.

I never meant to become a professional tree-hugger. I hung on to that tree because I had nothing else — I would have slipped into the void. But once I had my arms around a tree of my own, my options opened, and I couldn’t let go.

Daryl Hannah.

Courtesy dhlovelife.com.

The day started a long, long time ago, but Daryl Hannah’s got that laid-back, just-woke-up vibe — occasionally stumbling for a word, inserting a slow, easy laugh here and there. And who can blame her? She’s been working long nights shooting a film in Vancouver, B.C., about dirty cops. And on the weekends, she works on her new eco-video blog.

The willowy blond has more than 60 films to her credit, but she’s permanently etched in many people’s minds as the guileless mermaid in Splash. She surfaced more recently as a crackerjack one-eyed assassin-nurse in Kill Bill: Vol. I and II. And as much as she’s an icon in American cinema, she’s also become a key player in the environmental movement.

Sure, every celeb can give lip service to positive change, but Hannah actually spends most of her spare time walking the walk. The latest proof is her video blog, a series of five-minute films that offer snapshots of how people around the globe are helping each other, and the earth.

In the first spot, Hannah takes a lick off the gas cap of her 1983 biodiesel el Camino. The french-fry grease that powers it, she says, has a toxicity level “somewhere between table salt and maple syrup.” For another, she filmed her visit to Rwanda, where she encountered mountain gorillas — the country is home to the last 350 of the endangered creatures — and helped christen a village’s cisterns for World Water Day. A third video finds her profiling an organic vegan “junk food” joint. She plans to debut a new movie every Monday. Hannah says, “Basically, I’m trying to show a vision of an exciting and inspirational people.”

Grist caught up with Hannah in Vancouver. At the end of the interview, she stopped in mid-sentence to report that a giant bald eagle had swooped down, right over her head. She relayed it with awe, like a kid who’s wished for ice cream and suddenly sees the Mr. Softie truck.

You’ve really gone far and wide to find some of these subjects for your blog. Like Rwanda.

It’s not necessary to go far and wide. I mean, you can really find exciting and inspiring things within your hometown. I had an opportunity to go to Rwanda for World Water Day. I thought it would be such an incredible opportunity. But honestly, you totally find those things locally wherever you live.

You’ve turned into a documentarian, and you’ve turned into a journalist.

[Laughs.] I guess so. I made my first documentary when I was doing Dancing at the Blue Iguana [in 2000], and since August I’ve been working on another full-length one.

What’s been the hardest part of putting the short pieces together?

It’s a lot more involved than it looks for a little five-minute film. … I don’t actually have a real production company, I don’t actually have a [director of photography] and a sound person on salary, and I don’t have an actual crew. I’ve been using the same editor, thankfully, she’s been sticking with me, but I’ve been doing it full-on guerilla style. … I haven’t gotten any public sponsor or anything, because I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to sell any particular thing. I want it to have the integrity of something that is genuine and unbiased. So trying to do it on the fly is a little difficult.

Would you look for environmental partners?

It would be great to figure out a way for someone to say, “Yeah, I’d love you to keep doing these things, so here’s the money. Don’t worry, you don’t have to try to sell our product” or whatever. But I don’t really know how that works. I’ve never been good in the financial and business arenas. I handle the creative side of things.

Yeah, you’re the creative person. You have other people for that.

Well, I don’t have the people, but I hope that someone will take care of it at some point. I’m one of those people who figures that it will eventually sort itself out.

And apparently it does. You have a great thing going right now. Who is the biggest audience for your website?

Hannah at Global Green USA’s 2006 Oscar Party.

Photo: Jeremy Kost/WireImage.

We’ve been getting emails from all over the world. As far away as Papua New Guinea, all over Europe … it’s been very interesting, and one of the most satisfying things I’ve found is not only people who have been turned on to the subjects who weren’t aware of them, but also people who are kind of like me — who are making all their best efforts to live consciously and healthfully, and who have been sort of pessimistic about it, and to a certain extent, have been demoralized.

I’ve gotten emails from them and they’ve seen the blogs and it cheers them up, and it gives them hope that there are positive things happening — and that makes me feel really good.

In one year, what do you hope will happen with this project?

I’d like to be a giant enabler. I’d like to provide information, inspiration, and access to whatever goods and services are needed to make it super easy for everyone to change their lifestyle to a sustainable one.

What kinds of avenues have you taken in your own life to live consciously?

I try to improve in my own practices, but aside from my home being off the grid, and I haven’t been to a gas station in my own car in five years, I try to over carbon-neutralize myself for sure. … I have an organic garden at home. That’s a big goal of mine, to try and grow as much of my own food as possible.

Where do you live?

I’m in the Rockies. My house is bermed into the hillside, and so the front is all greenhoused in so I can grow indoors.

Does your ethic carry over into your film work as well?

You know, it depends. I wish I could, but there aren’t that many thematically aligned movies. Sometimes I’ll even do a movie because it’s a filmmaker, a cinematographer, an actor or somebody I want to work with [for creative reasons]. Filmmaking is such a collaborative medium. Sometimes it’s a character you want to play or a story you want to tell. Sometimes it’s just to pay the bills.

What else is important for people to know?

Your audience is pretty well-versed on most of these issues, but for the mainstream culture, to let them know to change out their household cleaning products, or their utilities or their light bulbs, those basic things can make such a huge difference. And then of course, obviously as far as issues such as global warming, something has to be done on the corporate side, there has to be some mandate or some legislation [to keep corporations from polluting].

Do you feel more helpless or more powerful?

That’s the thing. I really struggle with that feeling of helplessness. That’s why I really try to get my blogs, and even myself, to point to the positive and look at all the inspiring things that are happening.

Now I actually do feel hopeful, because I feel like more people are open to this thought process than ever. And I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it’s not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It’s really just common sense. I really think that’s what it should have come down to a long time ago.

Doesn’t it seem to you that things are kind of synergistic right now and people are opening up to these concepts? I think that’s really exciting.

Buenos Diaz celebrates with Trippin’
producer Elizabeth Rogers.

© Alex Berliner, Berliner Studio/BEImages.

Six months ago, I traded the comfy coffee hangouts of Seattle for the vermilion sunsets of L.A. I wanted to expand my universe, to write for movies and television, to not have so many Birkenstocks in my direct line of sight. So naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to cover the Environmental Media Awards for Grist.

I dressed carefully in my kicky Audrey Hepburn-inspired black dress and John Fluevog flat Twiggy boots. I had my nails done specially, then promptly ruined the manicure digging for my keys. Finally, I arrived at the Ebell Club and sidled up to the barrier dividing the press and the “green carpet.”

Because this wasn’t a major event like the Emmys or the Academy Awards, the press area was manageable and civil, with nobody jostling for position. The other journalists were surprisingly polite and jovial; they were also extremely casual, most of them in jeans. This is, however, still Los Angeles. The reporter next to me, from a fashion magazine, had a cheat sheet from her editor with questions to ask: “What fragrance did you wear on your wedding day, and why did you choose that fragrance? What’s your current obsession?” (Daryl Hannah’s, as it turns out, is farmers’ markets.)

I didn’t have a cheat sheet of my own, just plain old curiosity about what an environmental awards show would look like. I knew the nonprofit Environmental Media Association — a bridge between Hollywood’s entertainment industry and green organizations — would be lauding films, television shows, and companies that succeeded in passing along ecologically sound messages and practices. And I soon realized that this annual event, featuring a keynote speech by freshly branded TV magnate Al Gore, hadn’t attracted your typical granola-crunching, Celestial Seasonings-sipping folk.

Alicia Silverstone, Nia Vardalos, and
Rob Reiner work the ropes.

Photo: Vanessa McGrady.

Magic Carpet Ride

After the delicate dance between the early arrivals’ publicists and the journalists who were less than enthusiastic to interview them, the A-listers started filtering in — think Cameron Diaz, Alicia Silverstone, Harry Hamlin. Those arriving in hybrid cars were allowed to drive up the green carpet; Hannah showed up with her twin nephews in a primer-black biodiesel 1983 El Camino.

The crowd was populated by red-carpet veterans like Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart, Blythe Danner, and Hank Azaria. There were adorable teen celebrities from shows like Zoey 101 and a bunch of stuff you probably don’t know about on Nickelodeon. And there were diehard environmentalists who likely don’t give an organically grown fig about the red carpet, namely Ed Begley, Jr. and Rob Reiner.

When I asked Amy Smart of Road Trip and Starsky and Hutch what she’d like to say to the president and his cabinet, her first reaction was nonverbal, and involved one of her fingers. “Wake up. Gosh, to me it is completely devastating the way Katrina was handled, it’s devastating that there’s a war going on and that so many people are dying. There’s no real reason for it, there’s no importance placed on the environment. It’s just terrible. I don’t feel like he’s for the people.”

Wendie Malick in pink —
and ink.

© Alex Berliner, Berliner
Studio/BEImages.

Then came Wendie Malick. I kept thinking she was a Desperate Housewife, until I finally placed her as superbitch Nina Van Horn on Just Shoot Me. In real life, she was very nice — and didn’t mind when I accidentally poked her and got a tiny pen mark on her pink cashmere sweater. Malick, who serves on the EMA board, said her rule is, “Every time you get something, give something away.”

Which sounds like a good law of karma. Oh, karma: right after I poked Malick, Tony Hale of Arrested Development poked me in the chest while complimenting my necklace. Hale said he’s interested in modernizing the image of a green crusader. “One of the things is to break stereotypes of what an environmentalist is. When I was growing up it was seen as weird, tree huggers.”

Some “stars,” such as Extreme Makeover plastic surgeon Anthony Griffin, tried very, very hard to make the connection between their work and the environment. “This season we’re doing less makeovers, and saving supplies and things like that,” he said. I detected an irony deficiency in the good doctor. He told me about one makeover candidate who personifies the issue, a motorcycle rider. “He was weaving between traffic, he got his leg cut off. Is that an effect of the environment? Yeah, traffic, overcrowding. So we see the effects of what happens in the environment.”

Hmm.

I got more substantial thoughts from Begley, a rock in the environmental movement, who has even developed a green cleaning product, Begley’s Best. The earthy and charming actor told me how he walks the walk. “I can live on very little money now. Not because I have some huge savings, I don’t, but because I don’t require a lot of money,” he said. “I don’t have an electric bill to speak of, because my house is powered by the sun. I don’t use much gasoline, because my car is charged by the sun. I’m not using a lot of natural gas to heat my water for laundry and showers, because that, again, is heated by the sun, most of the year.”

In earnest and elegant style, Danner and Azaria, the stars of Showtime’s Huff, walked the carpet together. Danner talked about how she incorporates eco-responsibility into her life. “I wake up and I have tea with environmental tea bags. My granddaughter wears recycled diapers. I recycle, I try to compost. I’m even buying paper clothes. I’m getting a new apartment and I’m putting in bamboo floors.” Later in the evening, Azaria admitted that he was “embarrassingly ignorant” about how he could lessen his environmental footprint, even though he donates to green causes, but thanked EMA “for putting my mouth where my money is.”

Actor-producer-director Reiner, by contrast, sounded fully informed as he endorsed a “Manhattan Project for renewable energy.” He continued, “It’s win-win-win-win all over the place … Unfortunately, I think we’re going to need new leadership in order for that to happen. Right now you have an administration that comes from the oil industry, and talk about fossil fuel — they’re fossilized in their thinking. Not being forward-thinking — we’ve got to give that up.”

Kathy Najimy, who provides the voice of a character on the animated King of the Hill, put the liberal-actor message in a different light: “It’s a sad day when a cartoon is doing more and cares more and pays more attention to the environment than our president.”

It’s in the nature of actors to blow smoke, to pander to eager reporters and clicking cameras. And that night, sure, there were some people who didn’t know their PCBs from their PCP. But that they all showed up meant something.

Standing on Ceremony

When it came time for the actual ceremony, my duties were supposed to be done, but I finagled a ticket and took a seat in the venerable club’s auditorium.

All the world’s a stage for Hank
Azaria and Blythe Danner.

© Alberto Rodriguez, Berliner
Studio/BEImages.

In a sign of the changing definition of environmentalism, EMA Executive Director Debbie Levin urged the well-heeled audience to do what comes naturally: shop. “Nothing can ward off global warming more effectively than responsible consumerism,” she proclaimed. She advised them to drive hybrid cars, and to stay at hotels such as the luxurious and ecologically sound Fairmont chain (an event sponsor).

During the two-hour ceremony, presenters tripped over other helpful lifestyle tips (“A laptop is more efficient, because you don’t have to plug it in!”). The awkwardly written banter verged on painful — now it’s clear why Nicole Richie needed to be on an unscripted reality show — but a few original thoughts slipped through. Najimy, whose Emmy Award-winning show is going to be canceled, asked audience members to “tell [FOX] that we are going to send Ed Begley to storm them in his hybrid and clean the shit out of their offices.” Danner remarked that of her three children, Azaria — who plays her son on Huff — was the easiest to birth.

This year’s theme was family, and many of the participants and audience members had relatives in tow. As the evening’s keynote speaker, Gore was introduced by three of his children, who noted his ever-present passion for family and the environment. “It’s like living with the Lorax,” remarked son Albert.

Gore spoke little of his current venture, Current TV, and instead focused on long-term thinking and technology. “Corporate skinheads like ExxonMobil are leading us in the wrong direction,” he said, noting that the burden is on corporations to exercise environmental leadership. He suggested that this time of high oil prices and ecological precariousness is “an opportunity to put people to work to build better futures for the next generation. The real question is whether or not we will accept the moral responsibility for what we are doing.”

Before receiving a standing ovation from the adoring crowd, Gore presented “Ongoing Commitment Awards” to Cindy Horn (wife of Warner Brothers President and COO Alan Horn) and Lyn Lear (who’s married to Norman Lear). The women began the EMA, with the help of their high-caliber friends and families, in 1989. Their teenage children (the Lears have a son and the Horns have two daughters) have apparently been doing environmental work since shortly after emerging from the womb, and were each granted a “Futures Award.”

As for the other winners, episodes of The West Wing, King of the Hill, Lilo & Stitch, and Trippin’ took home awards for television; I (Heart) Huckabees won for feature film, and Farming the Seas for documentary. The Turner Award, which recognizes storylines that address overpopulation, was given to The George Lopez Show.

But winning didn’t seem like the ultimate goal, in light of the planetary purpose that brought everyone here. After the ceremony, the famous people and their entourages retired to the ballroom, where they enjoyed gourmet organic cuisine and a fund-raising auction. And me? Well, I guess my gala invite got lost in the mail. I just went home and munched on the organic, whole-wheat cardboard — er, crackers — they’d handed out at the door.