I’ve Done The Math – Now I’m Doing Something About It

October 18, 2013November 14, 2013Bicycles, carbon producers, citizen volunteer, climate change, Community Activists, election, energy efficiency, environment, environmental legislation, fossil fuels, green jobs, Ocean, politics, renewable energy, sea-level rise, solar power, Sustainability6 Comments

Why would your Creative Greenius walk away from his high-paying, highly rewarding executive role at CBS EcoMedia where I was working to fund environmental, education, and wellness projects all across the USA, just as the company hit more growth milestones and was likely to pay generous bonuses?

The answer is simple and direct – because I have done The Math.

And so it is that I resigned from my position as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs for CBS EcoMedia effective the first of this month and I will now be devoting my full time to working on climate change response with the South Bay 350 Climate Action Group, the South Bay Bicycle Coalition and 350.org

I had no other choice once I did The Math and saw what things add up to – and how little time we have left before the global temperature goes past the Game Over limit of 2°C.

Continue reading ➞ I’ve Done The Math – Now I’m Doing Something About It

Greenius Declaration of Human Rights

October 16, 2013November 25, 2013carbon producers, climate change, environment, fossil fuels, national parks2 Comments

When I was a child, Wednesday was Incinerator Day, the day they burned the garbage we all threw down the garbage chute in the six story brick apartment building my family lived in (which was one of a dozen six story brick apartment buildings that were all part of the same Brooklyn complex we called home.)

It doesn’t look any different in this recent Google satellite shot than it did in 1965 when the white and grey ash used to fall from the skies and cover our clothes, hair cars, trees, streets and everything else under the chimneys each buildings’ incinerators spewed their emissions out of. Don’t even get me started about the aroma that permeated the air every “Ash Wednesday” as my Catholic mother dubbed hump day.

This was five years before the Clean Air Act of 1970, before any kind of regulations on car and truck emissions or fuel standards or burning your garbage.

One of the fundamental goals of the Clean Air Act was “To protect public health and welfare from any adverse effects.“

The Greenius says goals are nice and cute, but commitments and action are what gets things done and commitment comes at its most potent and powerful form when it is driven by people acting on behalf of their basic human rights – it’s been proven throughout history.

Today, right here, right now the biggest and most immediate threat we face is the destruction of our climate and a future of hell and high water for the Baby Boomers, their kids and grandkids.

Continue reading ➞ Greenius Declaration of Human Rights

Climate Change #Liar-Deniers Are The New Racists

August 11, 2013carbon producers, citizen volunteer, climate change, environment, fossil fuels, hate mongeringLeave a Comment

When you ignore reality and the facts and you choose to embrace ignorance and irrational prejudice then you’re not just a jerk, you are a dangerous jerk.

And the way the Greenius sees it, it’s a nano-thin intellectual line between choosing to believe black people or brown people are inferior and not equal to you and yours and believing that 100+ years of burning fossil fuels is not the cause of global warming and that climate scientists are lying and part of a cabal perpetrating a vast left wing conspiracy.

As evil and damaging as racism is to individuals and our society overall, the Climate LiarDeniers’s evil far exceeds the scope of race haters because the damage is done to everyone at a global level of catastrophe that no racial supremacist ever dreamed of.

Continue reading ➞ Climate Change #Liar-Deniers Are The New Racists

The Judas Party Gets Its Silver For Selling Out their Saviors

March 17, 2013March 17, 2013carbon producers, climate change, energy efficiency, environment, fossil fuels, green education, Killer Coal, politics, renewable energy, sea-level rise, solar power, Sustainability2 Comments

It’s kind of a shame that our kids’ futures are being crucified since they’re the ones we need to resurrect us

In the many years I spent studying for the priesthood I learned that the stories of Jesus Christ’s years on our planet serve as models and lessons for all of us.

So it’s as obvious as a bad face lift that we are going through the stations of the cross and that climate change is our crucifix.

It’s been the Republican party, in the type cast role of Judas Iscariot. And the silver they betrayed us all for came from today’s Pontius Pilatus and the Romans – the dirty fuel industry top executives whose empire stretches farther and wider than Caesar’s ever dreamed of.

But unfortunately the way this version of the story is being written there is no Easter and Black Friday becomes Groundhog Day – doomed to repeat ad infinitum.

That’s because when it comes to humanity, vision and a sense of the future of their own brand, the Republican Party and their supporters makes the ancient Romans look like Quakers.

Continue reading ➞ The Judas Party Gets Its Silver For Selling Out their Saviors

Greenius Will Meet With Al Gore To Talk Climate Reality

July 26, 2012August 18, 2012citizen volunteer, climate change, environment, fossil fuels, green education, renewable energy5 Comments

Joe Galliani Selected As Climate Leader Just As Global Warming Reaches Tipping Points

After five years of studying, writing, advocating, volunteering, community organizing and now working professionally to try and make a positive difference on the issue of global warming – all in the face of relentlessly increasing world temperatures and rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions – I have reached the point of one last stand.

We may well be as doomed as doomed can be already – as I frequently tell my friends that we are, and the “Hell and High Water” may already have arrived earlier then even Joe Romm’s dire predictions, but I’m not quite ready to cash in my chips and give up the ghost. I can’t offer you any scientific hope to hang your sporty new fedora on, or any magic bullet news that might yet save the day, but I just don’t have it in me to piss on the fire and call in the dogs so I can go quietly into that good night.

Continue reading ➞ Greenius Will Meet With Al Gore To Talk Climate Reality

Your Greenius Earth Day Reality Check: Waiting For The Magic Bullet

April 22, 2012April 22, 2012Bicycles, carbon producers, climate change, electric cars, energy efficiency, environment, Environmental Politics, fossil fuels, Killer Coal, politics, recycling, renewable energy, Saving Energy, solar power, Sustainability, water conservation4 Comments

Today is Earth Day 2012, a day filled with celebrations of the environment and all the things being done to try and improve it and make it more sustainable . You can go to events where you recycle your old paper tax records, your motor oil, your cellphone, computers and other electronics.

You can go to festivals and visit the booths of green nonprofits and solar energy companies, take part in composting workshops, learn about wildlife protectors and electric car companies. You might even get the chance to hug a person wearing a polar bear costume.

You can participate in beach cleanups, ride your bicycle with large groups in parades or march in protests against coal-fired power plants, polluters and planet-pummeling profiteers. You can even watch NBC-Universal TV and see how they turned their logo green and laugh at their funny PSAs about cutting your energy use or carbon footprint.

But what you cannot do at any Earth Day event – or any other day’s events – is change the sense of urgency of the U.S. government or the majority of our population about taking the immediate and dramatic steps necessary to avoid runaway climate change or the hell and high water that’s coming with it.

Continue reading ➞ Your Greenius Earth Day Reality Check: Waiting For The Magic Bullet

While Fossil Fools Ignore Climate Crisis EcoMedia Acts Aggressively to Protect Environment

April 1, 2012April 2, 2012carbon producers, climate change, energy efficiency, environment, fossil fuels, green buildings, green education, News Media, renewable energy, Saving Energy, solar power, Sustainability, water conservation, wildlifeLeave a Comment

The latest news on global warming could not be worse. Climate scientists now agree that we won’t be able to restrict warming to just 2 degrees – which would have been bad enough. Those in the know, including NOAA say there is no doubt that the world’s extreme weather is being caused by climate change. And last week’s The Planet Under Pressure conference, made up of planet’s top scientific experts on the climate issued an urgent plea for action as we reach the tipping points for runaway global warming from which there will be no reversal or respite.

“Civilization is at risk,” they warned.

But no one is listening. You don’t read these stories in your newspaper or on mainstream news sites or see them on your TV news. The fossil fuel industry floods the airwaves and Internet with lethal lies and propaganda in a nonstop assault on reason and intelligence. News of the Mega Millons lottery jackpot and the gunning down of individuals in American cities trumps the most important story of the last 100 years. Distracted by the bread and circuses of our time and doomed by our own lizard brains half of the United States population believes that global warming is a hoax designed to make scientists wealthy. Every Republican running for President of this country agrees with that ruse and vows to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. Nothing I do can change any of that.

Faced with this bizzaro world reality I have opted out of futile protests and demonstrations and chosen to do the only thing I can do – increase the amount of renewable energy, energy efficiency, tree plantings and sustainability practices in the most effective way I can. Which is why I now work for EcoMedia, who is responsible for doing all of those things, and more.

Continue reading ➞ While Fossil Fools Ignore Climate Crisis EcoMedia Acts Aggressively to Protect Environment

Dude! What Part of Fires, Flood, Drought & Record Temps Didn’t You Understand?

July 2, 2011July 3, 2011carbon producers, climate change, environment, Environmental Politics, fossil fuels, SustainabilityLeave a Comment

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. That’s What Happens When YOU’RE the Jackass driving 140 Miles An Hour Totally Toasted

Good old now dead Jackass, Ryan Dunn, never provided me with a single ounce of entertainment, but he has handily provided me with an apt metaphor for all his fellow Jackasses who keep talking smack and moron-level nonsense about global warming and climate change being a hoax.

So he’s got that going for him now.

If we’re not the climate equivalent of a Jackass who already has 23 tickets and still gets drunk off his ass and drives 140 miles an hour and crashes and burns well then, I don’t know who is.

According to court records, Dunn had at least 23 driving infractions over the last 13 years from six different counties, among them citations for speeding and careless driving, driving an unregistered vehicle, driving without a license, two parking-related transgressions and a criminal mischief-damage to property citation.

Continue reading ➞ Dude! What Part of Fires, Flood, Drought & Record Temps Didn’t You Understand?

Traveling Through Time, Exploring the String Theory and Hugging the Giant Sequoias

June 4, 2011June 20, 2011climate change, environment, Environmental Politics, fossil fuels, green vacations, national parks, renewable energy, solar power, Sustainability1 Comment

I took an unexpected trip in the WABAC Machine last week while I was on vacation with the lovely and talented Debra just outside Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park here in America’s most beautiful state, California.

We like to rent a house in the town of Three Rivers when we go up there and we’ve always found different, very cool places to stay on Vacation Rental By Owner (vrbo.com). The house we stayed in this trip was perfect. It was a craftsman-built one-bedroom with every amenity. Private. Quiet. On 13 acres and just a 15 minute drive from the Park’s southern entrance.

There was a nice selection of books, especially guides to the flora and fauna of the High Sierras. We also found magazines (Utne Reader anyone?) CDs and Blueray DVD movies and documentaries.

I pulled an old issue of Sierra (the magazine of the Sierra Club) from July/August 1997. It was there because the cover story was “Among the Ancients, Giant Sequoias of the Sierra” Another article headline that made the cover, “Is Al Gore Our Great Green Hope?”

Wow… 14 years ago doesn’t seem like a million years ago, but damn if it wasn’t.

Vice President, Al Gore, talking about the need to take immediate action on global warming and failing to convince the President or any Republicans that he knew what the hell he was talking about.

Indeed as it turned out he knew far more than the President or any member of Congress did on the subject but none of them cared because Gore’s personality and persona didn’t work on TV. I’ve always said that it’s a curse to be truly intelligent in the USA and nobody in American politics ever fails when they attack the smartest person in the room for having too damn much intelligence and not enough common man “I want to have a beer with that dude” appeal.

Al Gore is one reason I like to believe in my own favorite version of the String Theory of particle physics – multiple alternative universes occurring simultaneously is the way I like to grok it.

Continue reading ➞ Traveling Through Time, Exploring the String Theory and Hugging the Giant Sequoias

Free Earth Day Movie Friday, April 22, in Manhattan Beach

April 6, 2011April 6, 2011carbon producers, citizen volunteer, climate change, environment, environmental legislation, fossil fuels, Sustainability1 Comment

From my great friends, Carolyn Miller and Transition South Bay L.A. and Sona Kalapura and the green city of Manhattan Beach

If you don’t know how damaging plastics are to our environment here are two free showings on Earth Day 2011 – Friday, April 22 – of the movie BAG IT that will enlighten you and make you angry. Angry is good when it comes to more petroleum based products that we have shoved down our throats until they choke our landfills and oceans. The Greenius says, Ban Plastic Bags! Then force the manufacturers of those bags to clean up the mess they’ve made all over the planet.