Doug Nunn
Doug Nunn is a local activist who gives talks about climate change. In the past three years he’s done 65 talks for a variety of groups, including schools, city councils, and Mendocino’s own Board of Supervisors. No stranger to environmental activism, he spent the bulk of his teaching career doing two things: teaching Improv and Theater and Eco-literature as part of the SONAR program at Mendocino High, and creating political theatre. His training in climate specific activism came through Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. Through Gore’s group, he, along with 20,000 others, were in a wave of folks trained to get out and make a difference. One of the talks leads the listener through the questions:
“Must we change? Can we change? Will we change?”
The answer to “Will we change?” is more about politics than science. Will we garner the political will to do the work of turning toward renewable energy and sustainability and break our addiction to fossil fuels? I asked him about the future of the Mendocino Coast area as far as climate change. He responded “I would hope that we could have sustainable development on the north coast, (development) that has to do with environmental tourism and sustainable industry. If we can get people to come over and do Ecotours, boat rides to look at whales, walks in the woods, leaving a light footprint. Ideally we would be in a situation where we don’t require too much of Mother Earth but create jobs for people.”
Doug moved here in late 1977. He was a cook at The Seagull Restaurant. Within six months of moving to the area, he teamed up with a few friends and coworkers. Together, five people bought 5.5 acres in Albion, land which he still owns to this day with this group. “We all started building houses under the radar until we wanted electricity.” They had a hard time with PGE, had to comply with the building department, and their power was turned off for six months, from November to April. “It was so cold.” Getting into compliance with the county building and planning department “took forever, back and forth. It seemed like we were perpetually being slowed down. I thought we were finished, went into building department, got sent back and forth over the course of multiple mornings to different departments until finally one another of the applicants said “Let the guy have his goddamn permit!” “We would like to get solar on our land but it is cost-prohibitive to transition because we don’t have all our permits. At this point we can’t get solar because we’d have to do an enormous amount of changes and adjustments. You’d think they’d help facilitate – we would pay for it and are ok with that. But they stand in the way and are punitive and make it prohibitive.”
Doug is political to his core. He prepared an extensive powerpoint, shared on YouTube called “The Politics of Climate Change.” This talk details the history of the response to climate change by major players in Washington. It names different corporations, the cronyism and blatant corruption that has fostered the suppression of climate science and the rise of awareness and subsequent suppression of information that takes us to our current day. He said, “Democrats finally have something to offer. AOC and the Green New Deal, those ideas need to be put at the forefront. True change needs to happen within about ten years.”
He was born in 1952. He notes in 1950 there were 2.3 billion people on the planet. Now there are 7.9 billion. “I’m 69 now I keep imagining, keep hoping… I foresee the planet going through some really tough times. Hopefully that Green New Deal becomes the reality.” There’s a serenity that long time activists tend to exude. They’ve been passionate enough to try, to fight for what they believe in, to raise their voice in service of the greater good. There’s a certain peace that occurs when you do your part. Doug’s been doing his part.
I ask him about his dream projects, what he’d do as far as climate change if he had unlimited resources and money. He picks the number $500 million out of the air and says that after he’d taken care of friends and family, he spend it as seed money for charity and eco-projects, specifically to sustainable industries… “set them up to build solar panels, say they employ 30 people. They would be doing sustainable work and be paid a reasonable wage.” He goes on to say he’d revitalize Franklin street, make it a “green industrial park,” with manufacturing capabilities and hopes for sustainable fisheries on the North Coast. “The marine life protection act takes a square mile of ocean that is protected. Within a few years, fish start spilling over.” He mentions “subsidize the purple urchins, use wind power, some aspects of the cannabis industry should be included. It needs to be brought out from underground because there are good people doing good economic work. Ecotourism could be one, organic bakeries.” He cites vegetarian restaurant Fogeaters Cafe, run by his stepdaughter Haley Samas Berry, and her colleague Erica Schneider, as an example of a successful green business.
He notes we need more local arts and culture, and reminisces about what made Mendocino so much fun in the old days. “One of the things what was really cool…Cat Mother and The All Night Newsboys, they came out from NYC with a big hippie caravan, a big music scene. They were huge in the 70s, and he talks about John Chamberlin (a local guitarist.)
He’s influenced by Bertold Brecht and the SF Mime Troupe. “As long as you’re gonna write a comedy skit, have an intention, have a purpose!” He belongs to Hit and Run theater and although they mostly do improv these days, over time he’s written a lot of skits with political intent.“ Brecht talked about this back in the 20s. Brecht said “If I finish and the audience isn’t throwing stuff at the stage, that’s failure”. “You want to get the audience jacked up”. Get up and block a road, call a congressman!
Make the audience think. You want them to go out smiling and thinking at the same time. Smiling and thinking.
I ask him about the kind of reactions he’d getting as a presenter on climate change. He says he loves doing it. “I feel like I give a give a good presentation. I’m excited to occasionally make something funny. It’s not a funny subject. I want to get people’s dander up. I’ll do another kid group tomorrow. Knowing that youth are excited is fulfilling.” The main impact he sees is “mostly young people who go off to college and get involved.”
I asked him about getting the word out and using social media as an activist. He said social media has been “a major disappointment.” “Twelve years ago I joined and thought ‘Look I got friends, oh boy this is neat.’” Having spent a lot of time living and working in Europe and coaching improv he was initially excited to connect with his friends in the UK and Germany. Over the last two to four years, with the coming up of Trump, it became clear to him that “so many people don’t care about the truth.” “When I was in school I had to study and hustle by doing the real research that was accepted by people the History Dept at CAL so I could stand up in class and develop and defend a point of view.” “The other guy would have to do as good amount of research as well. You didn’t get to just quote one side of the thing. I was a real studious person.” On social media, “The dumbest guys in class who never did their homework get to think that their opinions are just as viable and worthy as those people who did all the research and their homework.” We discuss the echo chamber phenomenon of social media, how the algorithm of social media sites show people more links, posts, video, etc of what they already believe, or the data predicts they might be likely to believe next. I ask him, “Have you ever changed someone’s mind? If so, how?” “When we used to work in Britain with my then girlfriend and comedy partner, one time we were playing at the Meccano Club in London. Some people would be against us just for being American. One guy came up to us after the show and said ‘I didn’t wanna like you. I tried very hard not to like you, but I ended up liking you.’ I loved that.” Once a local club asked him to do a climate presentation but without any “political” aspects. So he presented the “Must we change? Can we change?, the first two sections of the three part talk. Later, the man who invited him to speak called and said “I can’t help but think that you didn’t finish your talk.” Doug was not entirely surprised. “It’s a political talk. Climate change is politics! Either we stand up together and make a stand…” he trails off and doesn’t finish the sentence. Neither of us want to consider the alternative, at least out loud. As is the tradition, I ask Doug Nunn what his peak moment of 2021 was. He said “off the top of my head, something related to being a grandpa.” His granddaughter Bijou is three years old. Doug can be found pushing her on the swings at Wiggly Giggly Park in Fort Bragg on his days off.
You can reach him at dnunn@mcn.org or doug@thesnapsessions.com
