Bravo to Greenpeace for once again cutting to the heart of the matter and showing us the right way to deal with the oil industry today.
I admire and respect Greenpeace for actions like these which show more smarts and more courage than anyone in our government does.
While our national elected leaders fiddle, delay and obstruct as the planet heads for hell and high water, environmental activists like these Creative Greenius types who belong to Greenpeace are our last best hope for doing the right thing.
The smartest scientists on the face of the planet, the ones studying climate change and global warming, are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more. They’re really pissed because some of the dumbest people on the face of the earth have been successfully keeping us from taking the steps we needed to take if we were going to save our children from a future existence we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemies.
I asked Bill about the issues of optimism and pessimism and whether he still felt as he did a year ago when he told an interviewer that he no longer thought in terms of optimism and pessimism, he just got up every morning and got to work.
He said that today he draws his energy and inspiration from the young people, mostly in their 20s, who he works with. They’re not discouraged or to bummed to carry on. They know they’re being given damaged goods by the generation handing off to them and they’re ready to deal with it. They understand that the most powerful, most monied interests are lined up against them with a vengeance and they never expected it to be any different. They’re not ready to give up. And so… neither am I.
I asked Bill about the work my friends at GRID Alternative are doing and his thoughts on the adoption of rooftop solar in this final segment of my video interview with him.
Bill is the founder of 350.org and we’ve only previously talked together on the radio, so it was a great joy for me to meet Bill in person and exchange hugs and fist bumps.
Bill’s newest book, Eaarth was the topic of of his wide ranging discussion with L.A. Times staff writer, Susan Salter Reynolds, well known for her book reviews and “Discoveries” column.
I got a chance to talk to Bill about a few of the things we’re working on here in the Los Angeles area and the first subject was our Carbon Neutral City efforts in Hermosa Beach.
Kudos for the brilliant work on this new Greenpeace production to my good friend, Jenny Binstock, and the great cast and crew of volunteers from Greenpeace Southern California.
This would be even funnier if it weren’t so truly sad and sadly true. Too bad Meg Whitman wasn’t available because she would have been a contender!
It’s perfectly obvious that President Obama is attempting to reach out to the right and members of Congress who are owned by the oil industry with his move this week to make offshore drilling part of his energy mix. The Greenius understands full well this “Let’s Keep Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman Aboard the Climate Bill Bandwagon” approach, just as I can grok how ineffective and nonproductive that approach is. It’s not the first time the President has followed the same failed path of imaginary bipartisanship with people who only seek a return to the disastrous Katrina-style polices of the past – and it no doubt won’t be the last.
What did we expect? The dude is a politician, not problem solver. That’s MY job. I’m not running for nothing. I’m already the Greenius and there’s no term limits that come with this territory.
My pals at Surfrider Foundation aren’t running for anything either and they’re not about kissing ass to politicians who are nothing more than paid shills for big oil. That’s why they’re among the environmental organizations offering the public the truth and reality on the issue this week. With all due respect to the White House, all they offered was bullshit and spin this week. To see the difference for yourself, join us after the jump to read the four biggest Offshore Drilling Myths and Legends straight from the folks at Surfrider:
On Monday I wrote about how some of my friends on the Hermosa Beach City Council had ignored citizen requests that they stop using disposable Arrowhead plastic water bottles as their source of drinking water at City Council meetings. We had told them they were not only wasting money, water and resources – they were also setting a bad public example on television and on the web where their meetings are broadcast.
Some of my friends on the Hermosa Beach City Council don’t believe that drinking water out of a new, disposable plastic water bottle at every Council meeting does any harm – so they crack open a new bottle of water at every meeting to quench their thirst. Despite being asked for months now to bring their own reuseable water bottles and to filter their drinking water from the tap, the Hermosa Beach City Council doesn’t believe the example they set every two weeks at their televised meetings matters very much… And they don’t see what this has to do with sustainability.
Here’s a little video that will enlighten them to the facts:
In an era when most elected officials offer no substance and no positive vision for our future, DiVirgilio is downright JFK-like in his view of what must be done:
“But now is not the time to narrow the vision for our own future, to diminish our expectations for the better days ahead or to downsize the ambitions for our children’s quality of life.
Now is the time to step up and seize the opportunities available to those who act on new realities before they become mainstream trends. Now is the time to use the stimulus, grant and foundation money available to those who lead before the map is even drawn.
Now is also the time to act because we are standing at another threshold, the threshold of climate-change tipping points that may diminish the future prospects and possibilities for young and old alike.”
So we choose to go carbon neutral, not because it is easy, but because it is our best possible future, and the best path to preserving the small-town beach community and culture we all cherish and want to pass on to the generations who follow.
Creative Greenius 