Going Green with Ed Begley, Jr. & Rachelle Carson-Begley

Rachelle Carson-Begley, actor, Pilates trainer, and health maven, wrestles with Ed over the esthetics of going green.

Bart Brodsky: My partner Janet Geis first turned me on to your show. She said, "You've got to see this." I've been writing and talking about environmental issues since the 1970s, and I've been kind of a "pain in the ass" to people around me for a long time. Your show just took everything to another level, with great humor and gusto...

Ed Begley, Jr: Bart, thank you for being a pain in the ass!

Bart: (laughs) So, we want to have some fun here. Usually environmental topics are so serious, but you and Rachelle have just done a marvelous job! So much for our own bias here! We're really in your camp.

Ed: Thank you, buddy. Thanks so much!

Bart: Living With Ed is wonderful fun, as much for the family dynamics as the environmental message. Who thinks up the stories?

Ed: Joe Brutsman thinks up the stories. He's a friend of Rachelle's and mine. We worked with him on a movie or two and socialize with him. He said, "It would be fun to do a reality show with you guys. The way you interact with each other, I find, is amusing, and maybe this is a funny angle for a reality show. I went, "Well, what would that be?" "Living with Ed! What it's like living with a guy who rides a bicycle to make toast and is up on the roof with solar panels, hosing and brushing off. It could be funny." Rachelle is not as extreme as I am in these matters, and so it's a little bit of Green Acres going on.

Bart: Yes! How much of the show is scripted versus improv?

Ed: It's all improv. It's no script. Occasionally he has us read some voiceover to tie things together. He says, "I shot where you're going to Sundance for the film festival and it comes off where you're picking up at the non-toxic drycleaner. So can you say, 'I left Jay Leno's garage, got the drycleaning. Hit the roads, go to Sundance'"? That's as much scripted as it is.

Bart: When you went to Sundance you insisted on driving, and Rachelle wanted to fly. That's you, right?

Ed: That's me. Yup.

Bart: Do you fly at all?

Ed: I do. Since then I've flown more in the past year than I've flown in the past five years, maybe 10 years, because [environmentalist] David Suzuki talked to me. David heard I didn't fly, and I was regularly turning down environmental speaking engagements because I can't get there in time! I've got to be Monday in L.A. and I can't be Tuesday in New York! And David heard about this and said, "Ed, whatever you do I love you. But I'm flying more than I'd like to. I buy a carbon offset pass for the trip, and I think it's more important, it's a greater environmental good getting out there and spreading the word. I think it's good that Al Gore's doing it. I think it's good if you would do it. I feel it's good that I'm doing it. So you do what you want, but I think you should get out there more."

Bart: You totally fooled us when you went to visit Jay Leno, who is an obsessive automobile collector with a mammoth garage. We thought you'd start to lecture Jay about green energy, and Jay turns out lecturing you. Did viewers get that?

Ed: A little role reversal is always good. He has done a lot of stuff there in his green garage. It wasn't a green garage, and he credits me, for better or worse.

Bart: You first got involved with environmentalism in the 1970's, right?

Ed: Yes, 1970. It was the first Earth Day. That was really the catalyst.

Bart: Who were your first environmental heroes or gurus?

Ed: You know, Rachel Carson had touched me. From long ago, Henry David Thoreau affected me greatly. Helen and Scott Nearing, they wrote a book called Living the Good Life, went to Vermont from the city and lived off the land, and I wanted to do that! And, of course, David Brower, Friends of the Earth, and later, Earth Island Institute. David Brower was a great hero of mine.

BART: Absolutely. You know, for a successful, award-winning actor-couple, a power couple in Southern California, you live in a relatively modest middle-class home in Studio City, under 1,600 square feet. You have three bedrooms, right?

Ed: Two bedrooms, one and one half-bath.

Bart: Aren't you tempted to buy a mansion or a ranch befitting your status?

Ed: I'd like to have more land to grow more food. Rachelle would like a bigger house, and so, what we're going to try to do is expand her Pilates studio, her little room above the garage. We're going to expand it in a green fashion. We're doing a little room edition, 300 extra square feet above the garage right now, all FSC lumber (Forest Stewardship Council sustainable wood), all the greenest materials we can get, more rooftop for solar, which is good news.

Bart: That's still relatively modest. On the show you visit some of your actor friends that have got—literally—castles! But you're not tempted?

Ed: No, that's not for me. A house that big is not for me. Rachelle will probably leave me at some point for a house like that—you heard her.

Bart: (laughs) Yes! You're a vegan, right?

Ed: I was a vegan. Now I eat salmon occasionally. A few years ago I was actually cooking salmon for my wife, because I don't impose my dietary restrictions on her or anyone.

Bart: Without going into the health reasons for being vegan, are there environmental reasons that drew you to it?

Ed: Yes. The environmental reasons are quite large. It simply takes a lot less land to grow a pound of grain than it does a pound of beef. A lot less water, a lot less energy. With six billion of us here, I haven't had red meat or veal or lamb or pork since 1970. And I'm very happy about that. I certainly haven't had any confined animal meat in a while. The one exception is I started eating wild salmon once in a while. That is a compromise I've done because my protein was getting a little low.

Bart: Got you. Now, have you converted your Prius to plug-in yet?

Ed: No, because Rachelle really drives the Prius from day to day. Maybe we will at one point. The garage is so small, there's really room to plug one car in, and that's my pure electric Rav 4. So we have kind of a plug-in hybrid existence, if you will. That is to say, 300 days a year I'm either walking, riding my bike, taking the bus, or driving my pure electric car which is charged on solar. Then another 65 days a year, let's say, I'm borrowing Rachelle's Prius and driving to Milwaukee or Seattle or somewhere.

Bart: Do you know what your carbon footprint is, say, compared to the average American's?

Ed: It has been, since 1985, a negative carbon footprint for the following reason: I bought a wind turbine as an investment in the California desert. I own it—it's mine! It's not a carbon offset program. I put money down and I've pumped green electrons in the grid for the past 24 years. And it's not just one home's worth of power, it's many home's worth of power. Then, you add to that, like belt and suspenders to keep your pants up, I have solar on my rooftop for my electrical needs. Not only that, when I rarely buy grid power— and quite rarely—I buy green power for Green L.A from the DWP in Los Angeles. They have a green power program. And not only that, I buy TerraPass carbon offsets for my home energy use, for my car travel in Rachelle's Prius, for my air travel.

Bart: For people that are just getting into living greener, where do you recommend they start?

Ed: Start small. That's what I did in 1970. I didn't get into crushing debt buying hugely expensive 1970's solar panels. You know, they were really expensive back then?

Bart: Yes.

GREEN ACRES REDUX? Ed and Rachelle strike a reminiscent pose during the filming of their reality show, Living With Ed.

Ed: And I was a broke, young actor back then. I couldn't afford to buy such things. I did cheap and easy stuff that I could do: recycling, composting, a cheap electric car for $950. I started doing all that stuff that was very inexpensive, simply turning off the lights, getting the most energy-efficient whatever I could. And in so doing, I realized right away in the first year, Bart, I was saving money! And now those choices, today, abound! There's so many choices today, far more in 1970. You can start small, you can get an energy saving light bulb. If you like it you can get a few more....

Bart: You started a line of organic cleaning products, didn't you?

Ed: I did. "Begley's Best." They're doing pretty well at Whole Foods and elsewhere.

Bart. Excellent! Let's wax philosophical for a moment. Why do you think that some people "get it"? They understand the urgency of going green, while others just don't get it?

Ed: I think there's two mistakes that people make on the environment, two cases of erroneous thinking. And that is, people either think that there is no problem at all, it's all just made up by the press to scare us, global warming, water pollution, over fishing, and all of it. "They like to scare us on the evening news." Which they do! But people believe that [it's all a lie], that there's no problem. On the other side of the spectrum, wow! There's a huge problem, so bad we can't do anything! Too late! Global warming's in a runaway mode. "We can't do anything!" And that, I think, is a lie!

Bart: Excellent! You're all about empowerment, aren't you?

Ed: I am.

Bart: If you had President Obama's ear for just five minutes, what would you say to him about the environment?

Ed: I would say, make it a truly level playing field. Give us the same amount of subsidies that are currently given to oil and coal, for solar, wind, and geothermal. Give us the same amount of money that we're putting into research and exploration costs, for finding new oil and coal. Put that into getting every home in America to have a home energy assessment, so people could really find out, with today's tools—with an infrared camera, with a blower door, with duct blasting—to find out how their home is really performing. And then have additional pots of money so that [homeowners] could make these improvements.

Bart: Green jobs and retrofitting, right?

Ed: Green jobs and retrofitting! Green collar jobs the way Van Jones has been talking about, the way Barack has been talking about. And make sure they do it!

Bart: Agreed! Thanks so much for your time!

Ed: Thank you, buddy!

Janet Geis: I love your show, the give and take over green issues, and the home and the adventures with Hollywood stars and their homes. When did you first go green?

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Rachelle Carson-Begley: Well, I've always been concerned and doing the show brought it to the forefront. I remember when I was first with Ed, we went on a date with Don Henley and he said, "You know without the environment, the earth, our health, we have nothing." I found that to be really true. There are so many places where people live next to some unhealthy factory or plant and it is bad for their health.

Janet: Yes, you hear of terrible situations right now.

Rachelle: Yes, and we all have the right to expect that our environment, where we live, will be safe for us and our children.

Janet: You and Ed have had to work out issues like the rain barrel being ugly, or is it really time to replace the carpeting? When you and Ed disagree, who usually wins?

RC: (big laugh, and then a small sigh) I always agree with the underlying purpose of what Ed and I are doing. It's just the how to achieve something and the speed it needs to be done in that is in contention. The aesthetics especially are usually the conflict.

Janet: Since you've gone green what do you miss or feel deprived of the most?

Rachelle: Oh, I don't know, I used to live in an apartment so this house is really nice compared to that. I guess, well, flying on a private jet once in a while—

Janet: (laughs) I guess a lot of people are feeling deprived that way! Now, I know you are concerned about safe water. You don't trust Southern California water. Can you tell us about the home water system you found?

Rachelle: Yes, actually, I don't trust any tap water anywhere. I was looking for a good home water system. I found the LifeSource Water System at an event and we installed it for our whole house.

Janet: What differences have you noticed?

Rachelle: I can drink the tap water now and when I'm in the shower I don't smell all that chlorine. It is really great. You know even the schools here in Southern California announced that the water wasn't safe to drink.

Janet: So, do you send water with your daughter Hayden? Are you concerned about plastic in bottles?

Rachelle: Yes, I send a bottle that has just a little plastic in it. I think now you can get even better. I prefer stainless steel....

Living With Ed, now on DVD, is currently on reruns on the Planet Green Channel. Check your local listings.

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