Connecticut Green Living

On Earth Day there's no better time to watch a gripping documentary called "Tomorrow" . It shines a light on how both overconsumption and overpopulation have dovetailed at a time when climate change is threatening the planet. The film, first released in France at the end of 2015, stars French actress Mélanie Laurent ("Inglorious Basterds") and Paris-based activist Cyril Dion, whose message highlights a need to make the planet more livable not only now, but yes, tomorrow. Dion, who's also a director, co-wrote the film with Laurent. "Tomorrow" has won awards abroad, including France's equivalent of the Oscar, the Cesar, in 2016. Laurent as narrator explains how worried she is about her children's future following the 2012 publication of a Nature study from 20 researchers who show just how threatened planet Earth including we humans are. Stanford and U.C. Berkeley -based paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky , one of the lead researchers, ...

Drive around your neighborhood this afternoon. It doesn't matter whether you're hitting the shore in areas of Connecticut or the 'burbs of Texas, where your great aunt lives. In Alice, Texas, for example, the "rich" part of town boasts ginormous homes with unfathomable amounts of square feet. As this blogger's mother put it, "Yes, but where are the trees?" That could be a metaphor for why big houses require a second look. Energy consumption for homes over even 3,000 square feet could fuel a small school, library, or train station. And massive home building oftentimes occurs in areas that can least afford the carbon footprint. For example, in 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) compiled data that shows in Massachusetts, energy consumption is 22 percent greater on average than in the rest of the country. The EPA wrote: "Since the weather in Massachusetts and New England is cooler than other areas of the United States, space h...

This article originally appeared on Examiner.com, March 26, 2016. March 2,2017 update: Catch the film on Netflix. "What excited me so much about solar is that here is something we can all access and it’s a disruptive technology. Our electric grid was one of the biggest engineering achievements of the last century – and you put a lowly solar panel on your house and you've disrupted that." - Shalini Kantayya Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya has more accolades than a summer movie premiere has papparazi - from finishing in the top 10 out of 12,000 in FOX's "On the Lot" filmmaking competition produced by Steven Spielberg to being a TED and Sundance Fellow. Of course, this analogy only works until you realize that soon, this talented thirtysomething Hartford native will be bombarded by the press and she'll have as many shutterbugs in her face as she has plaques on the wall. The buzz is simple: this is a young filmmaker who gets what needs to be done. We nee...