|
Edited on Tue Apr-04-06 04:53 PM by lavenderdiva
and Julia Roberts  Vanity Fair presents its first “Green Issue,” beginning an “increased commitment to reporting on the threat to our precious environment,” says editor Graydon Carter. The May cover features a quartet of eco–power players, capturing Hollywood glamour and activist passion: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Al Gore, Julia Roberts, and George Clooney, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Articles inside address the pressing environmental issues of the day: Mark Hertsgaard reports on the reality of global warming; Michael Shnayerson writes on the Appalachian mountaintop-mining crisis; and a Green Guide offers up 50 simple things you can do in your daily life to help save the planet.
The May Green Issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on April 5 and nationally April 11.
Al Gore became the unlikely “It boy” of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, thanks to Davis Guggenheim’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which follows the former vice president on his relentless worldwide quest to expose the grave truth about climate change. But the fight against global warming is nothing new for Gore, who has made the environment a key part of his life for more than 25 years. Gore faced ridicule in the 2000 presidential campaign for pushing the idea of hybrid cars, and forged ahead with the Kyoto Protocol talks even after aides warned it was an unpopular move. Now, the Bush administration’s negligence toward our planet is facing one consequence it didn’t foresee: the unleashing of Gore’s anger, passion, wisdom, and intellect, untethered by advisers. Inside the issue, Gore’s essay, “The Moment of Truth,” explores the danger of the climate crisis, as well as the unprecedented opportunities it presents. Gore asks, “So why is it that our leaders seem not to hear such clarion warnings? Are they resisting the truth because they know that the moment they acknowledge it they will face a moral imperative to act? Is it simply more convenient to ignore the warnings?” Furthermore, he writes, “Where there is a blinding lack of situational awareness, the people perish.”
One of the most respected environmental advocates in the country, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works as a lawyer for Riverkeeper, a watchdog organization that monitors and protects the Hudson River ecosystem and New York City’s water supply. He is a professor at the Pace University School of Law, works as a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and somehow finds the time to broadcast his pro-environmental message via his weekly radio show on Air America. In Kennedy, the family that was in the thick of 20th-century events has a formidable representative in what may be the most pressing issue of the 21st.
Roberts, an admitted latecomer to environmental concerns, is proof that it is never too late to start caring about the earth. Why the late transformation into environmentalist? A couple of 18-month-olds could do it to a person. “People think, Well, I won’t be here when the planet implodes,” she says. “But maybe your grandchildren will, or your great-grandchildren, or your great-great-grandchildren. And if you could give them one more day on earth, wouldn’t you do that for them?” Currently building a solar-powered home in California, Roberts believes that the little things make a difference, from the metal cup she uses when she goes out for coffee, to the grocery bags she returns to the store for a nickel, to her twins’ environmentally friendly Seventh Generation diapers. “At a time like the one we’re in right now, where you feel like government and big business are kind of the same thing, people feel like the die is cast,” she says. “So much has already been destroyed and done and you can’t go back. Well, we can go forward, in a different way.”
Two thousand five was the year of George Clooney—and not only because he starred in two of the most important movies of the year. With Syriana, about the corruption arising from the United States’ dependence on oil, Participant Productions, one of the movie’s producers, worked with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to create a campaign called Oil Change, which offers audiences ways to cut their dependence on oil. “If you’re doing a movie about oil consumption and corruption, you can’t just talk the talk,” Clooney—who drove his fully-electric, zero-emission, two-seater Tango to the cover shoot—told Leibovitz and her crew. “You gotta walk the walk.”link: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/pressroom/ |
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
