After eight months of working directly with Mayor Michael DiVirgilio to introduce and launch the Carbon Neutral City initiative, I stepped aside two weeks ago to focus more on the surrounding South Bay communities and to play a different role in Hermosa.
Do yourself a favor and take 10 minutes to watch and grok this simple and easy to understand climate change lesson. Memorize the information as if you were going to be tested in school on it. Then use this knowledge to help explain reality to your friends and associates who have been duped and conned by the dirty energy industry into believing this is some kind of hoax.
It’s no surprise that the coal, oil and gas industries want us to keep using their dirty, unsafe fuels of the past which are running out and which are spewing pollution and deteriorating our atmosphere while they cook us inside the greenhouse.
But what is surprising is how many people we know and interact with argue against their own best interests and argue against a rapid transition to the clean safe fuels of our future which will never run out and which protect our health, our environment and our younger generations best chance for peace and prosperity.
So many lizard brains and scared little sheep among us in addition to the industry mercenaries and the always loudly heard defiantly ignorant. They will surely be our damnation unless we find a way to reach and teach them before it’s too late. The odds are that we’re already too late by a couple of years now at least and each passing day puts us another 24 hours behind.
But I’m still not ready to cash in my chips yet and start partying like it’s 1999. And I’m still up for the greatest fight between good and evil, between ignorance and enlightenment, between liars and truth tellers that ever played out here on good old planet earth.
Because in the Kingdom of the Lizard Brains the Autodidact with the high school diploma is King.
The sensationally sustainable Sona Kalapura is bringing the Big Green Bus to Manhattan Beach on August 2 and August 3.
The Greenius will be there both days to help support Manhattan Beach’s efforts and get to hang with some of the greenest, smartest and most environmentally hip people I know anywhere.
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 McKibben signs his new book "Eaarth" at the L.A. Times Book Festival (photo by Debra Bushweit Galliani)
I really enjoyed getting to table for 350.org at the same table author, Bill McKibben, was signing copies of his new book “Eaarth.” What I dug most was the way Bill personally connected with each person who had a book for him to sign. He took his time and had a brief but unrushed conversation with each person who came by.
Bill was just as unrushed and kind in his time with me in answering some questions for my video interview.
In this second of three video segments, I asked Bill about the work the South Bay Bicycle Coalition is doing in bringing a Master Bike Plan to the area that links the cities of the South Bay:
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.
Last Tuesday and Wednesday I lucked out and landed another volunteer slot on a solar installation gig with my old pals from GRID Alternatives. It’s the most physically exciting work I do as an environmental activist and I always feel like I’ve won the lottery when I get the email that says I’m part of the installation crew.
A low income homeowner in Inglelwood was the recipient of 14 – 215 kW primo Sunpower panels and a beautiful Sunny Boy inverter started showing the amount of carbon it was cutting just a few minutes after we turned it on
Creative Greenius 