A straight white male recovering engineer attempting to make the world better for all. Oh yea, and world peace, yea, that too.
About
Jim Merkel is a filmmaker, author, and educator who moved from military engineering to working for peace and sustainability. As an independent filmmaker, he has taken on roles as director, producer, editor, and at times cinematographer, but leans heavily on his network of seasoned documentarians.
His feature film Saving Walden’s World has screened in over 80 communities on four continents. It has been accepted to 21 international film festivals, winning 14 awards. The film traces Jim’s life from top-secret military sales to advocating for peace, the poor, and the planet. Logline: Ex-arms dealer returns from “enemy” territory with women-led solutions that could save the world on the brink for his son, Walden.
His Emmy award-winning crew captures societies as diverse as Kerala, India, Slovenia, and Cuba that are decades ahead in meeting the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. His film documents the dividends to society from women’s rights, land reform, universal higher education, maternity leave, childcare, and healthcare. These policies are seemingly unimaginable to Jim’s neighbors in rural Maine. Jim asks, “if societies with a fraction of our wealth and power can outperform us in child mortality, literacy, and longevity, what gives?
His book, Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth (2003), offers a path to a globally equitable way of living. He authored a chapter in Bending the Arc, by SUNY PRESS, focused on world peace, and four other books. A Jan Cannon Film, radically simple, features Jim’s work in action.
In 1994, Jim received an Earthwatch Gaia Fellowship to research the earth-efficient state, Kerala, India, and visited communities in the Himalayas. The following year, he founded the Global Living Project (GLP) in British Columbia, where teams of researchers monitored eco-footprints. Jim worked as Dartmouth College’s Sustainability Coordinator and volunteers with many community groups, including the Sierra Club. He and his partner, Susan Cutting, and their son, Walden and live off-the-grid in a home they built with oaks and pines from their land in Belfast, Maine.
“As a former engineer working on weapons, his words have a special power.”
Howard Zinn | Historian.
“Jim Merkel offers a special mix of practicality and idealism; a workable mix.”
Bill McKibben | climate activist | author
