IN THE NEWS

September 12, 2003

Julia Butterfly Hill and friends promote eco-consciousness at CU

By Matt Sebastian, Camera Music Writer

Julia Butterfly Hill sincerely believes people can be taught to preserve the Earth — and the famed activist says she witnessed just such a transformation this spring at a massive gathering in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

The organizers of that event — the debut "We the Planet" festival, featuring performances by Alanis Morrissette and Bonnie Raitt — were told by city officials that they'd need to provide one Dumpster per 1,000 people. Turns out that would be overkill.

"We had 10,000 people, which meant that we should have filled up 10 Dumpsters of trash," Hill says. "But at the end of that day, I looked out on the field — literally five minutes after everyone left — and almost fell over because it was greener than when we'd gotten there. When it was all done, we collected less than one quarter of one Dumpster of trash — for 10,000 people."

That San Francisco event, on April 20, was so successful Hill decided to take her message of eco-conciousness on the road, a tour that comes to Boulder today for several events, including the opening of the Rocky Mountains' first biodiesel station. Two of the stars of that first festival, actor Woody Harrelson and Concrete Blonde singer Johnette Napolitano, will join Hill in the tour's vegetable oil-fueled bus.

"Julia's energy is so inspiring," says Napolitano, who's slated to perform a 30-minute acoustic set at tonight's event at the University of Colorado's Glenn Miller Ballroom. "I would have gone for whatever she wanted me to do. I'm fortunate, actually, to be at a point in my life where I can afford to take a couple weeks off and go around and scream and yell.

"But even more than that, I'm doing this because I want my education, too — and I know I'm going to get it."

The "We the Planet" tour is the brainchild of Hill, who made a name for herself in the late 1990s while spending two years living in the limbs of a California redwood named "Luna," a successful effort to save the tree from clear-cutters' saws. The tour, presented by Hill's Circle of Live activist group, is designed to spread her message to a broader audience, she says.

"We're trying to reach the kind of audience that traditionally turns to the mainstream media for information," Hill says. "They're not really getting the real facts about what's going on, many times even in their local communities. I majored in business in college, and what I realized we need is a new marketing strategy, because marketing, in our world today, is a form of communication — that's how people communicate with each other, through marketing and branding.

"By using icons of our mainstream celebrity culture, we can draw in a lot of people who wouldn't traditionally come to an event where we're going to talk about problems and solutions and how everyone can get active in our world."

One of Hill's main goals is to highlight biodiesel energy, which is why she, Harrelson and Napolitano are traveling cross country in a bus fueled by vegetable oil. Biodiesel is a cleaner-burning fuel source derived from renewable source such as vegetable oil. Proponents say biodiesel lowers emissions and other pollutants, and is less toxic than table salt.

Hill and her cohorts will appear alongside Boulder Mayor Will Toor at 10 a.m. today for the grand opening of Bartkus Oil, 3501 Pearl St., the region's first biodiesel station. Following that event, the group moves to CU's Dalton Trumbo Fountain for a noon rally in support of biodiesel energy.

"Anyone who has a diesel car can run off biodiesel," Hill says. "It's not an out-there, 'hopefully someday,' hippie alternative. If you've got a diesel car, you can run vegetable oil through it."

At tonight's event, Hill also plans to honor a pair of Coloradans for their work supporting social and environmental causes: Quianna Ray, a poet and spoken word performer who teaches third, fourth and fifth graders at Denver's Curtis Park Community Center, and Charris Ford, a biodiesel activist who helped launch the nation's first 100-percent biodiesel bus in Telluride.

Reached in Toronto, where he's promoting biodiesel fuels, Ford — an "eco-rapper" who also dubs himself "the Granola Ayatollah of Canola" — praised Hill's tour for shrewdly using businesses principles to promote environmental consciousness.

"We're at a point where we need to make this cultural shift, we need to make environmentalism fun and sexy and exciting," Ford says. "We need to use the tools of PR and advertising to make the environment hip — or things won't look good for our children and children's children, who'll be left with a world without natural resources."

Napolitano, who admits she's no eco-activist, says she looks forward to the coming together of people for a single, and simple, cause.

"We really need to save our future," she says. "I don't think that can be argued by anyone."

The above article was taken from the September 12, 2003 issue of the Boulder Daily Camer. The original can be found here.