Our documentary project has a great opportunity to recieve $15,000 worth of web/creative services from Free Range Studios, the wonderful folks behind Annie Leonard’s remarkable internet sensation/film, Story of Stuff. Your votes will ultimately choose who wins this grant. Please visit the grant/voting site and consider casting your votes for GrowthBusters. The deadline is December 1, but don’t wait; top vote-getters have higher visibility throughout the voting process.

Here’s a walk-through the voting process in case you get stumped:

1. Visit the voting site and register.
2. Find Sustainable Living in the list of categories on the right.
3. You should find Help GrowthBusters Help Us Embrace the End of Growth in the list and cast up to 3 votes for us! . . .

A large support network is critical to distributing the film.

Every day I hear from people around the world who’ve discovered this film project and want to encourage me. Yet frequently I find they have not joined our e-mail list. Why would they skip such a quick and easy way to support this project?

I suspect it’s because I haven’t communicated our distribution strategy very well. While Michael Moore, Al Gore and Morgan Spurlock have made it so documentaries can sometimes get theatrical distribution, for every film like Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, there are a hundred documentaries that never get a theatrical run.

While we’re not ruling it out, we simply cannot count on Hooked on Growth being picked up by a Hollywood distributor. So our distribution strategy depends on an army of supporters around the world arranging community screenings and viewing parties. By joining our e-mail list you’re not committing to do anything, but I need to be able to give you the opportunity to help when the film is released. . . .

Today I’d like to draw your attention to a modern superhero – No Impact Man. I first learned about this un-caped crusader two years ago when mild-mannered Colin Beavan was in the midst of his year of living less dangerously for the Earth. He and his family were attempting to live for one year with zero net impact on the planet. This was the No Impact Man experiment.

Make no mistake, the experiment was extreme. One New York Times story dubbed it, The Year Without Toilet Paper. In the New Yorker Elizabeth Kolbert described the family’s life as climbing the stairs to eat cabbage slaw in the dark. Stephen Colbert had a much tighter grasp on reality when he described it as “like ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ only completely implausible.” . . .

July 11 is World Population Day, as declared by the United Nations in 1989 to raise awareness of global population issues. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of awareness out there. Of the 6.77 billion people on the planet, too few have either the courage or the awareness to weigh in or do something about the subject. Overpopulation is the proverbial elephant in the room, and it is a big one.

There is widespread agreement among scientists that we are in overshoot. According to Global Footprint Network, 1.3 planet Earths would be required to sustainably meet the needs of our current population at present levels of consumption and waste. If we continue current upward trends in consumption and population, by 2035 we’ll need 2 Earths. This means we are not acting sustainably. We are using up stuff that we, and/or future generations, are going to need. . . .

In a classic scene from the film City Slickers, Jack Palance holds up one gloved finger as he counsels Billy Crystal that the secret of life is just “one thing” that is all-important. “You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.” Eventually Billy Crystal figures out that “one thing,” the key to life.

I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that “one thing” must have been economic growth. I’ll hazard a guess the phrase “economic growth” is mentioned, on national TV and cable networks alone, over 200 times daily. President Barack Obama probably emits the phrase 20 times a day on his own, and that’s not counting talking in his sleep. Restoring economic growth is right up there with putting a man on the moon, ending terrorism, and putting cheese in a spray can. Who would argue with that? Never one to shy away from controversy, allow me to take a stab at it. . . .