Featured Legacy Donor Michel Saint-Sulpice: A Man in Love—With Gaia

Would you like to meet a truly Happy Warrior? Meet Michel Saint-Sulpice! Michel is the embodiment of an environmental steward. He is profoundly in love with the earth and all the living things that make up the web of life that sustains us all. This love governs his life and the exemplary way in which he lives it.

Michel was born in Grenoble, France, into a family of artists and architects and grew up partly in the city and partly in a small rural village in the Alps, where his father would frequently take him on Sunday walks into the mountains. These experiences were part of the early fuel that energized him. He studied architecture at the University of Grenoble and moved to New York in his 20s. It was in New York, in 1970, that he encountered another spark that lit his environmental passion: the first Earth Day. Attending Earth Day opened his eyes to just how badly we were abusing our planet and its living creatures and how urgently we needed to change our ways-for the good of the planet and for our own good.

Michel moved to Santa Barbara in 1976 and discovered, to his delight, that this was the place where Earth Day originated. And by discovering Santa Barbara's Earth Day, he in turn discovered the organization playing a central role, not only in the event, but also in local environmental solutions: The Community Environmental Council. He joined the board of CEC, then still in its early stages of development, and became a lifelong supporter.

Michel Saint-Sulpice is a romantic, in the best sense of the word, but a romantic who puts his beliefs into action. He is in love with Gaia, the name for our Earth conceived as a living being of which we are integral parts. He likes to share this love. In the 1980s, he used his artistic and creative skills as an architect to design Project Gaia, an intensive educational exercise for sixth graders in which students design a sustainable lifestyle on an imaginary planet.

Settled with his wife, Mary, on a property in the hills of Montecito, Michel has worked tirelessly to convert their home into a model of sustainability with relatively modest expenditures. He has installed a large array of solar panels that produce more electricity than he needs to power the whole household, including a pool and an electric car. He has replaced all of the lawn with drought-tolerant landscaping; he has terraced the sloping land to create spaces for fruit trees and vegetables to thrive (he calls it a food forest); he irrigates with gray water and rainwater he collects from his roof; and he composts.

As a result of these efforts, Michel and Mary's home has a zero carbon footprint. They have accomplished much of this with the work of their own two hands and, in the process, have demonstrated that truly sustainable living can be achieved with no serious deprivations. On the contrary, it affords a lifestyle that is comfortable, enjoyable, and healthier than its alternatives.

We are deeply grateful to Michel for including an exceedingly generous legacy gift to the Community Environmental Council in his trust. It is a tangible expression not only of his long-standing commitment to CEC, but also of his love of the earth and humanity, and an investment in a future in which the earth and its creatures, including people, live in balance.