One Can Make a Difference (11 page)

But doing something of value isn't always easy. Early in my career, I was a very nervous speaker. In fact, in 1970 I was supposed to teach psychology class during my first year of graduate school, but I became so nervous that I walked out. I realize now, one of the reasons I panicked was I had no slides.And I needed them to help make the pictures that were so clear in my head a reality for others. This was an important realization for me because I knew I wanted to actively bring about change rather than simply heighten awareness of it. For instance, Zen meditators are able to achieve a state of oneness with the universe, an acceptance of reality as it is, but I wanted to reform aspects of reality. The dreadful shackle hoist system would still exist if I'd not been involved in convincing the plant to remodel. Therefore, identifying what was tripping me up and figuring out a way to work with it was vital to achieving my vision.

In 1974, I started doing cattle-handling talks. Since I was a weird nerd, I had to show a portfolio of my work to convince people that I was skilled. I learned about the power of showing a portfolio when I was at a meeting of the American Society of Agriculture Engineers. Since they thought I was weird, few people wanted to talk to me.The attitude of many of the engineers toward me really changed after I showed them one of my drawings. They said, “You drew that?” People respect ability, and there are other people on the autism spectrum who've had successful careers by selling their work instead of themselves. I encourage other autistic people to show what they can do, rather than wait for people to come to them. Autism is who I am, and by talking and writing about how autism has helped me with my life's work, I strive to give others with autism courage and confidence. Ideas are passed on like genes, and over the years I've discovered I have a great desire to pass on my ideas. I would like for everyone, autistic or otherwise, to experience this same pride of helping other beings, to feel the same satisfaction I get when I see that I've changed something that was once awful into something that is now good.

PETER HAMMARSTEDT

Defending Whales and Seals

While Peter Hammarstedt is only in his early twenties, he is already a driven
man, a sea warrior who works aboard the mightiest antiwhaling, antisealing
vessel in the oceans, the
Sea Shepherd
. He is also the first mate aboard the
M/Y Robert Hunter
, what he describes as, “the newest addition to the
Whales' Navy.” I wanted Peter in this book because he illustrates very well
how rewarding it is to follow your heart and have a huge impact on those with
no voice. I spoke to him at his home in Sweden, where he was born, but Peter
and the
Sea Shepherd
are seldom there.Their work is off the bloody ice floes
of Newfoundland, in the waters off the coast of Japan's dolphin killing fields,
and guarding Mexico's turtles from human predators.

G
rowing up I was a bit of a loner, although I have a younger sister. We moved constantly, so I didn't have steady friends. I lived eight months in Kuwait, going from snow to sand, then two years in Saudi Arabia. At the age of five we moved to China; at six I was living in England; at seven we moved to the United States.

Because of this, I was always sensitive to what was going on in the world. One of my very earliest memories is of my mother yelling frantically for me to get away from the windows. It was the Tiananmen Square massacre.The troops were shooting at the windows, knowing we were foreigners, trying to make sure, I suppose, that we didn't look out and see what they were doing to the students and other people on the streets. In thinking back, I believe that more than anything, this is when I learned that we live in a world where humans believe that “might makes right.” We had to pack up as quickly as possible and get out. As we were leaving, I saw tanks everywhere. I was allowed to take only one thing. I chose my toy dog, Dizzy, and I still have him.

Back then, I wanted to be all traditional things, like a doctor, a priest. When I was about twelve, I started giving 50 percent of my allowance away to charities. Once, I saved about $100 and I had to figure out what to do with it. I started looking up different animal protection groups on the Internet.That's when I came across a picture of Antarctica, and it was a life-changing experience. After that, there was nowhere else I wanted to be but in a Zodiac (an inflatable boat) protecting whales.

The first vegetarian I met was a girl in my class in Pennsylvania. A group of kids surrounded her desk and were giving her a very hard time, asking her would she eat this or eat that, lots of silly hypotheticals. She was calm. I accused her of trying to take away my “right” to eat meat. The girl said no, she was just trying to enlighten me. She explained that on a factory farm, a hen lives her whole life in a cage just eight and a half by eleven. My jaw dropped. I didn't eat lunch that day, thinking about what that must be like. I knew that if what she said was true, I couldn't say I cared about animals but still eat them. I felt betrayed that no one had told me this before.

There is a painting on my wall that my mother took out of China when we evacuated. At that time, any art was illegal in China if it was not Communist art, and there used to be illegal art shows in homes in the countryside. That's where she bought this one. It shows thirty hens pecking at grain, and it means a lot to me now. It hangs right beside my “I am not a nugget” poster showing a little chick who doesn't want to grow up to be inside a KFC box! I think my mom recognized my track in life before I did.

I found I could never shake those original images of Antarctica and the whales, so, as I grew into my teens, I began doing some research. I came across the
Sea Shepherd
site and read that the ship was looking for crew. By that time, I was old enough to leave home so I signed on right away.

The Canadian seal slaughter that I witnessed still gives me nightmares. People call it a “hunt” but I have yet to meet a single hunter who would call bashing baby seals over the head with clubs, “hunting.” I was there in 2005. The ice is absolutely surreal, heavenly, like a world made of broken fragments of mirrors that sparkle in the light, that reflect the colors of the rising and setting sun. It is a wonderland where mother seals come to have their babies, to leave them to bask in the sun, feeling that they are totally safe, being miles and miles away from man. Not realizing that the boats will come, that human greed will catch up with them and reduce them to a bloody pulp.

Humans don't belong there at all.We must go there to confront the seal killers, to film what they do, to report their indefensible acts of unspeakable cruelty to the world, to witness their despicable acts that violate the International Seal Protection Act. We see an entire world of white turn to red as the seals' blood runs across the ice. There are suddenly carcasses everywhere as the babies are killed with the blunt or sharp ends of the Hak-a-piks, and stomped, kicked more than once, sometimes six times or so with the sealers' cleated boots.

During the hunt, I found myself running from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They're there on the ice to protect seal killers, not seals. I had video evidence, and I didn't want them to seize it. But they tackled me and knocked me to my stomach. I lay there, practicing passive resistance, my arms held behind my back. And as I turned my head, there, just two or three meters away, was a pup. I was so close to her, and her eyes and my eyes were linked together. I do believe she knew the difference, she knew I was not a sealer. As long as I lay there, she was safe.

On a good day, we can stop sealing, but the hunt is massive, and they keep coming back. When I know I have saved a seal, it is an extremely personal experience. I don't care then if I am locked up for years! We're often assaulted, but we have to stand our ground. Our clients are the marine animals who have no way to fight for their lives; no power. I think Captain Watson (founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and founding director of Greenpeace Foundation) speaks for all of us, whether we are on the ice floes or the high seas. When he was challenged about sinking an empty whaling vessel in Iceland, he said, “The hell with you. I didn't do it for you. I did it for the whales. Find me a whale who would disagree and I'll stop.” These sea animals have real intelligence, which means they absolutely want to live in harmony with the world. Even the “stupidest” of animals wants that. Captain Watson was once confronted by a whaling boat captain who told him that the reason it is acceptable for human beings to slaughter these magnificent mammals is because “we” have moral reason and intelligence. Captain Watson just stared at him. What is the good of reason and intelligence if all you do is use it to harm others?

RU HARTWELL

Global Flight Control

One look at the long lines at any airport, or at the newspaper ads for low-cost
exotic vacations, shows that the skies are full of fuel-guzzling aircraft. And for
every 750 gallons of fuel used on one of these flights (about the amount of fuel
it takes to get one from Denver to Tucson), nearly 5,000 pounds of exhaust
per hour is pumped into the upper atmosphere. Pretty frightening. Flying as
much as I do, I find myself constantly looking down to see more and more acres
of woodland disappearing, something that fills me with horror. Every tree is
home to countless forms of life, and every tree felled means dirtier air for all the
Earth's inhabitants—not a great prospect.

Ru Hartwell is a gentle and kind man who lives in the woods in the Cambrian
mountains of mid-Wales. He loves trees and always has. Now, he has
found a way to put his life's interest to work to help the environment and make
people feel a little better about their trips. Through his firm,Treeflights, anyone
boarding an airplane can partially mitigate their carbon footprint by sponsoring
the planting of a tree, or several. It's an idea that's really “taking off” and a
grand example of how doing what you love can make the world a better place,
which fits the theme of this book to a T.

I
've been a tree planter for a very long time as well as a frequent passenger on planes. In my youth, I traveled to forty-two countries. Back then, there was nothing I loved more than getting on an airplane in one location, soaring through the skies, and landing somewhere new. It's funny, although I loved trees then as much as I love them now, I wasn't connecting how my pleasurable flight here or there was damaging, often destroying, the very thing I loved most. When we fly, we create all this CO
₂
, the very antithesis of what a tree does. A tree absorbs CO
₂
, holds on to it and keeps it safely out of the atmosphere, to put it simply. It was just ten years ago that I heard the phrase “carbon neutrality,” which means neutralizing the effect of the greenhouse gas emissions you are personally responsible for. I was very struck by this concept. Parent forest trees (not the constantly “harvested” forests that get replanted by, say, lumber companies) absorb very large amounts of CO
₂
, and the whole world's forests absorb 20 to 25 percent of all carbon emissions the world's industry spews into the atmosphere. We humans forget how amazing trees are. We take them for granted, perhaps because they are quiet, they don't make any noise. They are just there, doing an incredible job.

This conundrum began to bother me, and I spent a long time thinking about how to fix it but not getting anywhere. People, while perhaps cutting back on flights, aren't going to give them up altogether quite yet. Then, one morning, I woke up with this word having popped up in my head. Not just the name, Treeflights, but the phrase, “Click here to make it a Treeflight.” I kept saying it, and I liked the sound of it. It signified so many different things. I told my sons about this idea when we were eating breakfast. My boys have every reason to discount my sometimes daft ideas. One earlier business idea was Christmas tree rental. I would dig up the tree, deliver it to someone's house for the holidays, and then return it to its patch afterward. The problem is that the trees didn't like coming from the Welsh mountains to sit indoors by a radiator. They coped, but they didn't like it, and it sometimes took them four to five years to recover from the experience, so I stopped that.

I believe that you can't have success and good feelings without failures and bad feelings. Losses bring you strength, and I've had plenty of failures and mistakes! But, when I told the boys about Treeflights, instead of ribbing me, they liked it. In fact, everyone I mentioned it to said, “fantastic!” I'd found something I not only deeply believed in, but a good thing everyone could really appreciate. The idea is that if people are booking a flight online through an airline Web site, they should be able to “click here” to make partial amends by sponsoring the planting of a tree, maybe two trees or more, depending on how much they wish to pay. I know it's hard for some people to stop flying, so planting a forest will definitely help mitigate the damage.

Sixteen years ago, when I first moved to where we live now, there were only four or five patches of woodland. The rest was windswept bleak pasture. Now our cottage is completely hidden in the woods. The area has changed for the better; there is wildlife and a real ecosystem, all thanks to the trees. To me, it has been a privilege to transform it all by planting them. The kids can enjoy playing outside. And the trees provide homes for the birds and insects and make an amazing wind break, without which anyone out here would be swept off their feet.

I've always tried to live a green life, which is what trees are all about. We generate our own power in our small mountain retreat. We make electricity from the little stream, we have solar panels. So now that we've done that, I can dedicate myself to helping others reduce their carbon output, too.