A festival of green

Laguna Beach will celebrate Earth Day in October.

The Endangered Planet Foundation “” in collaboration with the Festival of Arts, Laguna Beach Magazine and the Laguna Beach Visitors Conference Bureau “” will host its premiere Environmental Festival One Earth/One Dream Oct. 2 to 5 on the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts Grounds.

The three-day public event includes more than 50 green exhibitions, world-renowned speakers, seminars, live music, films, art, fashion shows and interactive workshops for adults and children.

Charles Michael Murray, founder and chief executive of Endangered Planet, said the goal is to raise environmental awareness through a collection of diverse interests that will appeal to a multitude of people.

“People need to know the good, the bad and the ugly that is happening in our environment and what choices they can make in everyday life to help,” Murray said.

“We want to seed the vision that we are in humankind’s finest hour. We have the technologies and brain power and compassion to engage in local and global solutions “” together. We expect to showcase by celebration and dialogue that we can make this a better place for our children’s grandchildren.”

One Earth/One Dream will hold two main events: One will provide useful environmental information, and the other will engage participants in serious issues through festive activities and entertainment.

The “Life on the Edge” symposium will run all four days and feature former United Nations Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury and National Geographic Eco-Ambassador and photographer Chris Jordan, and will cover topics like innovations in fuel-cell technology and transportation, sustainable building design and environmental ethics.

Film screenings, including “American Southwest: Are We Running Dry,” a film that focuses on the worsening water crisis, will also be shown.

“We need to acknowledge and support products that are moving in the right direction,” Murray said. “We need to act now and vote with our wallets “” our money and credit cards are votes to keep the development of these [green] products rolling.”

The Autumnal Green Festival will showcase green exhibitions and products, feature The Art Miles Mural Project, promote family health and wellness through presentations and interactive workshops, and include music and dance entertainment for adults and children.

Guitarist Kristofer Szasz, Gypsy-Latin performer Emilio and African music and dance group Akyaa are among performers at the fair.

“We’re very proud of these powerful performers who tie their work to environmental issues and bring people together,” he said.

Joanne Tawfilis, founding executive director of The Art Miles Mural Project, an organization that engages adults and children from all over the world to promote global peace and harmony through mural art, said she will display between 30 to 40 environmental murals created by youth worldwide at the fair.

“We are [currently] creating over 12 miles of murals, with more the five miles of environmental murals,” she said.

“These will be part of a modular and mobile framed pyramid in Egypt in 2010.

“This began as a grassroots effort and is now a moment involving more than a half million people from over 125 countries.”

Endangered Planet, founded in 2006, is dedicated to ensuring the survival of the Earth through education, dialogue, the dissemination of knowledge and the recognition that advances in technology can provide many of the answers, which lead to a sustainable future.

For more, visit www.endan geredplanetfoundation.org. To purchase tickets for One Earth/One Dream call (949) 497-5690 or visit www.oneearthonedream.org.