This is not hot news or anything, but some of us are still feeling the effects of super storm Sandy.

She was a bitch.

She tossed a very large tree across our yard totaling not one, but two of our cars. Nice. She managed to destroy our fence door and do some damage to the house as well. Keep in mind, we’re about 50 miles from the shoreline too. 

However, in light of the many who lost their homes—and even those who literally lost family members—we got off pretty easy. Nothing our good insurance and some minor adjustments in our lifestyle couldn’t fix.

I haven’t owned a car since that time and have taken the opportunity to enjoy walking all over my awesome town–I heart Boonton, NJ! My husband and I car share, which means I have access to a car about 20 percent of the time. But I’ve also used this time to get connected to many car manufacturers and have done week-long (sometimes longer) drives in some of the greatest plug-in hybrids and EVs out there.

So why am I rambling about old news?

Because one of my assignments this week was to watch and review Years of Living Dangerously. We had an opportunity to speak with two of the women featured in episode 4, The Preacher’s Daughter, in last week’s GD Show and they were more than inspiring. Anna Jayne Joyner IS the preacher’s daughter, fighting to close coal plants, while her father preaches against climate change; and Mary Anne Hitt is also on the front lines with her tireless work with Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which is successfully ‘retiring’ coal plants across the country. Yup, we can make a difference. 

Please listen to this excellent Green Divas Radio Show podcast featuring Anna Jayne Joyner and Mary Anne Hitt from the Years of Living Dangerously series, episode 4. 

Click HERE to watch the first episode!

GD Lynn is in town, so we got in front of a TV all psyched to watch episode 4, but it wasn’t on demand yet. Ugh.

I had watched the first two episodes, but had not seen episode 3, so . . . this is where all the history with Sandy comes in. It was stunning to go back in time with the producers and the featured celebrity guides to see how Sandy is still raining on many family’s lives and hear from both climate deniers and climate scientists about how our weather patterns are changing and how we humans are contributing to some of this extreme activity.

There was a fascinating political storyline that seeks to break down the walls of denial for a congressman, who was directly impacted by Sandy, but still stayed in his Republican aisle and remained convinced that climate change is a natural phenomenon and there’s nothing we can do about it. 

I won’t spoil it for anyone. Each episode has a couple of running story lines that are so well produced and lay out this new and often frightening reality with undeniable science. There are a couple of story lines that not only highlight differences of opinion, but work to illustrate how someone can shift their perception, and more importantly how individuals can absolutely make a difference. 

Not going to lie—the first couple of episodes are powerfully intense with a shocking sense of potential doom, but we start to see the light emerge by the end of episode 3. And from what we learned by talking with Anna Jayne and Mary Anne Hitt, there’s a lot of hope in episode 4 . . . and Ian Somerhalder. We’re still waiting for him to call for his interview. Both Anna Jayne and Mary Anne reported that this guy is not only charming and handsome, but he’s walking the walk and is very sincere in his desire to do his part to make the world better with the Ian Somerhalder Foundation. Some girls might say he’s a sexy AND philanthropic vampire.  
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