For the past four years, I’ve returned to UC Santa Barbara, my alma mater, to teach marketing and communications strategies through the Environmental Leadership Incubator. This program, which kicks off with instruction in the fall and continues with mentorship through the spring, helps students design and execute their own environmentally focused campaigns. Each year I am equally impressed and inspired by these students and honored to participate in the process of empowering them to change the world. But this session was special, because my daughter was there auditing the class. Will she end up a Gaucho? I hope so! 

Could carbon-negative dye make black denim cool again? The FABRIC Act, a federal bill to improve worker conditions and boost domestic apparel manufacturing, could become law this year. Walmart is funding Goodwill to partner on circularity project that promises to transform unsellable textiles into raw materials that can be used to design new products. Eileen Fisher mends take-backs and puts them up for sale with pride. Like homemade stuff? So does the planet. Etsy leads the Russell 1000 by sourcing 100% of its electricity from sustainable sources, making emissions reductions across all three scopes as part of its verified 1.5-degree Science Based Net Zero commitment, and providing sellers with 100% recycled packaging. Love these thrift flips — also as gift ideas. Teacup candles? Yes, please! 

The EU set a 5% target for wine bottle reuse by 2030 — and in Oregon, wineries are stepping up early. Keeping workers employed while transitioning to the EV economy just makes sense. Ecuadorians recently voted to stop drilling in the Yasuni National Park. President Biden established The American Climate Corps, a training program that could create 20,000 jobs in clean energy and natural disaster preparedness in its first year. And Volkswagen is the latest car manufacturer to hop on the eBike bus. 

 

Last but not least: Under SB 253, which was recently signed into law in California, companies will be disclose the full picture of their emissions — including Scope 3, which are the ones that come from supply chains. Why does this matter? The state is the world’s fifth largest economy and, under this law, even casting Octavia Butler as Mother Nature and hiring former EPA head Lisa Jackson won’t allow Apple to make the claim that their Apple Watches are carbon free, simply because of the amount of money the company has in the banking system, which bankrolls our fossil fueled economy. As Bill McKibben so aptly put it on The Crucial Years, “If you’re the head of Chase, and Tim Cook says ‘bro, we cannot meet our promise to be net zero by 2030 if you don’t change,’ then you have precisely the kind of problem that’s necessary for progress.” (And if you’re not signed up for his newsletter, you should be.) 

No spoilers to ask what “Killers of the Flower Moon” might have been if an Osage (or at least Native) writer had developed the script? As detailed in multiple press interviews, when Martin Scorsese and Leonardo di Caprio realized during pre-production that they were telling a white-centered story, they “consulted” with Osage leaders. In a marketing segment that precedes the film, the director himself assures viewers that every effort was made to respectfully engage the community. But was anyone really listening? An opinion piece published in the Washington Post — from which I pulled the photo above — presents a valuable alternate perspective.

(Spoilers ahead.)

The movie spends roughly three of its three-and-a-half hours depicting the stories of white men who have no moral qualms about killing Osage people, with some of the bumbling played for laughs. All the while lead actress Lily Gladstone — who is phenomenal and so eloquent in interviews about the importance of telling this story — portrays a stand-by-your-man stoic who only has agency in her very last scene.

Clearly I’m swimming against the tide here as glowing reviews pile on, but the whole thing pissed me off, especially as a white woman who grew up with Native people who were much more nuanced and complicated in their perspectives than those portrayed in this film. 

And the argument that the movie is simply being true to history also doesn’t sit right with me — as the historical record that “Killers” perpetuates was written by those who benefitted from it. The story is tragic and should be told, but if I were a filmmaker with all the money and power in the world I might think about empowering someone else to tell it. 

Okay off the soapbox, and apologies for the left turn from regular programming. Did you see the movie — what did you think?