Simran Sethi knows what the stereotype of the environmental movement used to be.
“Hemp-wearing, yurt-living, off-the-grid hippies,” she said. “Either that or upper-middle-class white males. Those were pretty limited definitions of environmentalists -- and none of them were any fun.”
Sethi, who now lives in Lawrence, is a former news anchor for MTV Asia, former BBC producer, proud Punjabi, and has never lived in a yurt. She's not white or male. She's one of three female personalities who will appear between segments of “The Green,” a new night of programming that begins Tuesday and will air weekly on the Sundance Channel.
“The Green” will feature critical documentary films like “Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash,” about what many scientists say is a global crisis in energy consumption, and “Crapshoot,” about the crisis in American sewage -- didn't know there was one, did you? -- and how unclean muck might be getting into the food chain, and I hope you weren't eating Sunday brunch when you read that.
But “The Green” will also try to accentuate the positive with programs that offer practical solutions for being environmental, as well as whimsical profiles of some not-so-practical folks whose visionary efforts to “go green” are both inspiring and informative.
The three-hour weekly mix kicks off with “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on Sundance Channel (which is on digital cable). Here you'll meet a guy who's running cars off vegetable oil -- the original fuel of the diesel engine 100 years ago -- and the L.A. clothing designer who's making silky, luxurious wearables from earth-friendly materials, and not just hemp.
You may have seen Sethi touting eco-friendly lifestyle products on Oprah's and Martha Stewart's. Or maybe you've seen here sitting in Local Burger in Lawrence. She lives locally, works globally. She's anchors the video component of TreeHugger.com, a website that gives practical ideas for ecological living.
I asked Sethi, who was born in Germany and has lived and worked around the world, how the U.S. stacks up with the rest of the planet.
“If everyone consumed the way the average American did we would need five planets,” she says. “But what I like about America is that when we see a problem we try to make it better. There's a lot (of eco-effort) coming from big business, which is really unprecedented. The degree to which you see corporations wanting to be associated with environmentalism is remarkable.”
She's new to the area, and being in the center of the country has given her new appreciation of the importance of eating locally raised food.
“One of the things I love most about living in Kansas is feeling much closer connection to family farmers. I am obsessed with food, I love it, and knowing that the average item on the American plate travels 1,500 miles from farm to fork really makes me wonder” what can be done to encourage sustainable local agriculture.
So were the producers of “The Green,” which include the folks who brought us “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” The May 15 episode of “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” will focus on food, and at Sethi's suggestion one of the segments was filmed at Local Burger.
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