Earlier this month in Puerto Plata and Sosúa, conservationists from all over the world gathered for the second annual Dominican Republic Environmental Film Fest.

My friend Asher Jay was lucky enough to make it to this year's festival, where she showed her Message in a Bottle exhibit on sustainability and the world's oceans.

The festival was open to the public, and hundreds of students and activists attended the art showings and film screenings. Asher says:

This festival seeds so many grassroots movements and empowers people from all walks of life to take responsibility for their own backyard and day to day actions. Personally I don't think it is about people hitting a point of saturation on current consumption habits, but realizing that such endless material appetite never leads to true satiation.

The festival featured full-length and short films. Check out the trailers to a few of the films they screened right here!

Surviving Progress

This film, scheduled to come out in October of this year, takes a look at human progress, how it's harmed us, and how we can take control to save ourselves.

Carbon for Water

We take ready access to clean water for granted, but in many parts of the world meeting water needs is a labor intensive effort. Carbon for Water documents how simple water filters changed lives in Western Province, Kenya.

Taste the Waste

We waste between 30 and 50 percent of the food we produce. This film delves into the causes and possible solutions to our world food waste problem.

Photos by Anne Casale, used with permission

Amidst the Saturday morning haze of Forecastle, I had the chance to catch up with singer-songwriter Ben Taylor. Mid-way through a short summer tour, after a few missed calls and some minor miscommunications, I finally got Taylor on the line. The son of music legends James Taylor and Carly Simon and a sustainable agriculture advocate, Taylor is stoked for his fall tour and the upcoming release of Listening. Here's an excerpt from our conversation:

KM: As part of this new album, Listening, there are a lot of different genres mingling together. It's got quite an eclectic sound - how did that come to be?

BT: I feel like my music is really folk music for muts. I think it turns out that way because growing up I was always told there is no bad kind of music, there's just bad examples of every different kind of genre and so I really do have a very diverse appreciation for all different kinds of music. I listen to a lot of it so I suppose it influences my own artistic decisions.

Check out the full interview and learn more about Taylor's upcoming album and his involvement with the Island Grown Initiative, visit our sister site Green Up Music.

Image Credits: Pete Gurnz

The Empire State building is lit red today to raise awareness about dolphin hunting and the film The Cove

The Cove is the award-winning documentary that sheds light on the covert dolphin hunting culture in Japan. National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos directed the film, and it provides a shocking, undercover look at dolphin hunting in a cove in Taiji, Japan. You can check out the film's trailer right here:

Our pal Asher Jay hipped us to the tribute and shared the beautiful image at the top of this post with us. Asher says:

I had the incredible privilege of meeting Ric O'Barry in person last evening for dinner, a long time personal hero of mine, whose unfettered commitment to cetaceans large and small serves as a continual source of inspiration to me. He is living proof that an individual can make a difference, that a single voice can incite a global shift in consciousness. The lighting of the Empire State building today, Dec 9th 2011, salutes his profound connection to the dolphins being slaughtered in Taiji, Japan. I think it is absolutely crucial that everyone watches The Cove, as this 2009 Academy Award winning documentary is a compelling look at a large range of interconnected environmental issues through the microcosmic reality of dolphin culling in the cove. People assume that this movie is a bloodfest, but having seen it myself I can assure everyone that the narrative is eloquently and elegantly portrayed so as to not repulse the audience but educate them.

Take a picture of the Empire State this evening as it sheds red honor on the dolphins in Taiji and hashtag it #TheCove on twitter or spread the word to your friends via other social media conduits, you need not be in Taiji to lend a voice today. Log on to thecovemovie.com to know more and to take action now!

The lighting ceremony happened on account of Leilana Munter's initiative, an environmental enthusiast who has already made three trips to Taiji in an effort to contribute and raise awareness for the unnecessary and cruel culling of dolphins there. The ceremony took place on Dec 9th 2011 at 10:00 a.m., in the presence of Ric O Barry, Leilana Munter, John Leguizamo, Louie Psihoyos and Steven Fisher.

Dan Nelson, long time friend of Louie Psihoyos, has just launched Cove Wines LLC, to support OPS (Ocean Preservation Society) and the organization's relentless campaign to scupper and stop the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji Japan. Look up http://www.thecovewines.com/. I had the immense honor of receiving one of three Zinfandel bottles east of the Mississippi with signatures from Louie Psihoyos, Ric O Barry and Dan Nelson last evening! To me the wine in that bottle is now the holy grail of the environmental movement, I am never uncorking it!

Dolphin Hunting: What You Can Do

The best way to help Japanese dolphins is to spread the word about this practice, and the folks at The Cove make it easy to get heard. Here are some ways that you can help:

• Sign their petition to help save the dolphins
• Donate to Save Japan Dolphins, a group working to end dolphin hunting in Japan
• Donate to Ocean Preservation Society

Image Image via Asher Jay, used with permission

And now, GreenAnswers will plant a tree for every new member and keep on planting for questions asked or answered.

To plant the trees, GreenAnswers has partnered with one of our favorite non-profits, Trees, Water & People. TWP has been working with communities in Central America for over twelve years to help protect and manage their natural resources. In that time, TWP has planted over 3 million trees that provide fruit, timber, and firewood to the local communities.

In some cases it is undoubtedly true that "ignorance is bliss." We all must pick our battles in life if only to maintain our sanity. In other cases though, there are simple, easy things we can do that will profoundly better our world-- and this is why you should watch The Cove, an exciting, emotional documentary that suggests that we really have to do very little to keep over 20,000 dolphins from being pointlessly slaughtered each year in Japan.

I confess that it took me and my wife almost a week to watch The Cove after we received it from Netflix. I had heard that it was an outstanding documentary. But I thought the subject would be depressing. Day after day when we sat down for some evening television and web-browsing, the documentary kept losing out to NBA playoff games and TV movie tripe like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Finally, my wife put down her foot and said that we were wasting our money. We had to watch the movie.

Before I say more about the film, a slight aside: two years ago Slate magazine's John Swansburg conducted an informal poll about "The Netflix rentals Slate readers just can't bring themselves to watch." Out of 1000 responses, Hotel Rwanda and Schindler's List came out on top.

As Swansburg noted, "Hotel Rwanda is that rare movie about a devastating subject that nevertheless feels like something you really do need to see. The same goes for Schindler's List, which finished a close second among Slate readers. Both appeal to the lofty sense of ourselves that comes to the fore when we're managing our queues. Neither feels especially appealing after a long day at the office."

If Slate were conduct this poll again in about 6 months, I bet that The Cove would pop up to nearly the top of the list. But after watching it, I was impressed that despite its most graphic, soul-crushing scenes, even among documentaries this one was extremely entertaining, educational, and inspiring.

For the uninitiated, The Cove might as well be described as a thriller. Here's the setup:  in the coastal Japanese village of Taiji, each year community fishermen work collectively to drive thousands of bottle-nosed dolphins into shore, so that they first can sell a few select dolphins to aquariums, hotels, and anywhere else that wants to host captive dolphin shows. Next, the dolphins that are not selected are moved somewhere else, never to be seen again. This place is in fact "the Cove," a hidden, high security facility that exists within a Japanese National Park.

Roger Ebert eloquently describes the rest in his review:

"The Cove," a heartbreaking documentary, describes how Richard O'Barry, director Louie Psihoyos and a team of adventurers penetrated the tight security around the Taiji cove and obtained forbidden footage of the mass slaughter of dolphins. Divers were used to sneak cameras into the secret area; the cameras, designed by Industrial Light and Magic, were hidden inside fake rocks that blended with the landscape.

The logistics of their operation, captured by night-vision cameras at times, has the danger and ingenuity of a caper film. The stakes are high: perhaps a year in prison. The footage will temper the enjoyment of your next visit to see performing dolphins.

Ebert is right, and I will even go further and say that the last thing he mentions is what is most important.

In the film we are introduced to Ric O'Barry. In the 1960s O'Barry worked for the Miami Seaquarium as a dolphin trainer. His talent was recognized, and so he was asked to capture and train the five dolphins that would be featured on the popular television show Flipper. O'Barry suggests that the show's popularity led to the huge surge of interest in live dolphin shows around the world. In other words, he was an essential contributor to the growth of the industry-- and as a result, the mass slaughter of dolphins that would eventually take place in Japan.

In a rare case of a 180 degree life-turns, O'Barry left behind a life of wealth and fame to help destroy the industry he helped create.  In many ways The Cove is his story. It is reflective of our own tendencies to love animals to death-- even when we might be ignorant of how our actions hurt animals more than than help them.

The answer to preventing the slaughter of dolphins that occurs in Japan is pretty simple: make people aware of what's happening and destroy the demand. How big of a sacrifice is it to choose not to go see a dolphin show? Not a very big one in my estimation, especially if you know you that it might help to prevent the needless slaughter of over 20,000 dolphins a year. I've written before about the costs of animal captivity in comparison to the benefits of having animals available for educational purposes, and The Cove makes it clear that in the case of whales and dolphins, captivity is immoral.

But beyond this message, there are other interesting things I learned by watching The Cove. For instance, I never knew that dolphins are actually whales. The reason that we do not think of them as whales is in part because the corrupt International Whaling Commission does not recognize them as species meriting protection. We also learn about how Japan has assembled a voting bloc within the International Whaling Commission that agrees with its perspective without hesitation. They accomplished this feat by bribing small developing nations in the Caribbean with investment dollars.

While many have voiced concerns that the documentary unfairly critiques Japanese culture, the film itself notes that most Japanese people do not even know about the slaughter occurring in "the Cove." They have been kept in the dark. In fact, this past week several theaters in Japan refused to show the film because of protests from people who thought the film was insulting to Japan's culture (after seeing the documentary, you might be inclined to think the people behind these protests are actually paid censors).

To partially defend Japan, other countries like the United States have similarly inconsistent practices that could be labeled as evil, bad, or corrupt. For instance, when I thought about the mistreatment of dolphins in The Cove, as an American I instantly began to ponder how our factory farms were any better. Animals like cows and chickens are treated just as poorly. We just do not think of their tortured deaths as tragic because they are domesticated animals that Americans eat regularly (rather than wild ones), that also do not have toxic levels of mercury in their bodies (as dolphins do). While I have not seen it yet, my guess is that the new documentary Food, Inc., is something of American companion version of The Cove. My guess is that it's actually a lot harder to stomach than The Cove, because it probably demands its viewers to change their food buying habits substantially-- and this gets us back to my premise.

So why should you watch The Cove? Because it's a damn entertaining film, you will learn some things, and you will only need to do one very important thing: choose not to go see whale and dolphin shows. That's a pretty low price to pay to save over 20,000 dolphins a year.

If you like Levi's writing, you can follow him on Facebook or Twitter

Or visit his website at www.levinovey.com

"Equal Exchange started with an idea: what if food could be traded in a way that is honest and fair, a way that empowers both farmers and consumers? What if trade supported family farms that use organic methods, rather than industrialized agribusinesses that rely on harmful chemicals? Their mission is to build long-term trade partnerships that are economically just and environmentally sound, to foster mutually beneficial relationships between farmers and consumers and to demonstrate, through our success, the contribution of worker co-operatives and Fair Trade to a more equitable, democratic and sustainable world."

The contest ends on May 22nd so head over to The Good Human to find out how to win and thank them for 4 years of great work while your there!

If you're reading this site, chances are the you're looking to make a change, either in your own life or something on a larger scale. Maybe you belong to an activist group or maybe you're just doing the best you can on your own. The social networking site Evolver is a fantastic resource for pulling our efforts together in one central place.

Through their networks both on- and offline, the group helps like-minded folks get connected. Like S. Corey Thomas said at the start of the "spore meeting" that I recently attended here in Atlanta, Evolver wants to "hold the umbrella up, and we can all climb underneath it."

Just like any social media site, Evolver lets you join groups, post about events, and connect with people.

Evolver has regional groups all over the world, that hold periodic meetups. The meetups, or spore meetings, are all held on the same day each month with the same theme. That means that whether you attend a meeting in Atlanta or in Sydney, you can feel a connection to that larger movement.

The spore meetings are a great way to connect with likeminded folks in your community and around the world. If there isn't a spore meeting in your area or you're looking to connect with folks about a specific issue, Evolver has you covered in that department, too! From groups about food systems to yoga, Evolver's umbrella covers a lot. Don't see a group that addresses the issue that's important to you? It's easy to start your own!

If you're working on something specific and need help from the community, you can submit your project along with what sort of help you need. It's easy to keep up with your friends' projects with just a click, too!

Want to get involved? You can sign up for Evolver, maybe join a group, or find an event near you!

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by ception