By 5:45 every morning, Laurie David is wide awake, sitting at her computer and surfing the Web. “I check The New York Times, the Huffington Post [where she also blogs], the Drudge Report, CNN, ABC, The Washington Post. By 6:15 a.m., my blood is boiling,” says the environmental activist. One gets the sense, though, that she likes nothing better.
For the past decade, the jet-haired David has been fighting for environmental awareness — even before it was a cause du jour with galas like the one in New York Wednesday for the Natural Resource Defense Council at the Cunard Building, chaired by the likes of Evelyn de Rothschild, Donatella Versace, Oscar de la Renta, David Geffen and Nicole Kidman. David’s conversion was prompted by the onset of the SUV craze. “I had a lightbulb moment when I was a young mother, out pushing a stroller,” the wife of comedian Larry David remembers. “Every car whizzing by was an SUV and all my friends were buying SUVs. I connected the dots that these cars had very low mileage and high pollution. We were all doing it and nobody really understood it. So I read everything I could.
“Once you know something, you can’t go back,” she continues. “Life as we know it is changing. We are altering the climate. It is the mother of all issues.”
As easily as other Hollywood wives can run through the pros and cons of the latest skin treatments, David can spout statistics: Did you know a compact fluorescent lightbulb lasts 15 times longer than a regular one? That every American receives on average of 60 mailed catalogues a year, which is about 17 billion total? That this past July, more than 2,000 heat records were broken?
But she also realizes that many, including her privileged peer group, might be more than reluctant to alter their lifestyles even though the ozone is deteriorating. “It’s not about sacrifice,” insists David, who offsets her own travel by private jet by providing funding to plant trees and the like. “It’s not about perfection. It’s not about doing everything, it’s about doing something.” Far from speaking with the expected preachy demeanor, the 48-year-old Long Island native has a breezy, direct attitude that is refreshing.
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She dispenses such practical advice as unplugging your cell-phone charger when not in use, using a mug rather than disposable coffee cups, taking a garment bag to the dry cleaners to avoid using excess paper and plastic and unsubscribing from paper catalogue mailing lists.
As might be expected, David has issued the same edicts in her home, though they have been received with mixed emotions by her family, particularly the switch to recycled toilet paper. How do such unexpected changes and her constant travel — up next is a biodiesel bus tour of college campuses with friend Sheryl Crow, kicking off in Dallas on April 9 — affect her famously grumpy husband? “I’ve stretched this marriage to the limit,” David jokes.
David — who gives every impression that she herself is trying to do everything — is a nonstop cheerleader for her cause: She is leading a “virtual march” on Washington through her Web site, Stopglobalwarming.org, she’s a trustee of the NRDC and has written two books: “The Solution Is You,” and an upcoming textbook designed to educate middle-schoolers about global warming. And, of course, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the documentary she coproduced, just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
But don’t expect her to kick back and relax.
“I feel compelled to do something. This has to become a movement,” David says. “Wouldn’t it be easier not to wake up feeling like this? My life would be simpler.”