The Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce quietly parted ways with its executive director last week, telling local reporters only that it wanted to embark on “a new direction” that would include “more community outreach and more collaboration with local businesses and city government.”
Well I’ve got just the new direction the Chamber is looking for.
When it comes to the holiday season I’m a Thanksgiving kind of guy.
I love everything about T-Day: the focus on gratitude and appreciation, the gathering of family and friends, the sharing of a feast we’ve all contributed to, and best of all, its non-denominational inclusiveness.
In a year when there was hardly anything on the national environmental scene to be thankful for (and frankly plenty to flat out freak out over) it’s been the right time to think globally and act locally, especially if that locality happens to be Hermosa Beach where you have green champions such as:
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.
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.
Joe Galliani, the Creative Greenius at the 2009 Torrance Environmental Fair
That’s your friendly, neighborhood Creative Greenius volunteering his time for the South Bay Environmental Services Center at the 2009 Torrance Environmental Fair. I’ll be back again this year, at Madrona Marsh on Saturday, March 27 from 10am t0 3pm talking about ways to save energy, save water, save money and cut your greenhouse gas emissions.
Check out the roster of speakers and presentations after the jump.
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.
Courtesy of YouTube and the Hermosa Beach City website, and converted and enlarged through the magic of Greenius, we bring you this exclusive look at the Carbon Neutral ClueTrain leaving the Hermosa Beach station this week. Local mainstream media missed this story completely but fortunately for them this on-line record will exist for them to use as research. So will the reporting that the new Patch.com news group will be providing.
The story actually began last week during Hermosa Beach Mayor’s State of the City address where Mayor Michael DiVirgilio spoke about the Carbon Neutral City concept:
Mayor DiVirgilio was right back at it Monday night at the Hermosa Beach Green Task Force meeting, speaking enthusiastically on behalf of the idea:
Join us after the jump to see your friendly neighborhood Greenius and my Fratelli Verde, Robert Fortunato, following the Mayor with our own remarks.
As your friendly neighborhood Greenius continues with his efforts to help Hermosa Beach become the first carbon neutral city in the South Bay, it might help some of you to get up to speed on what we already know is coming our way here in California from climate change and global weirding.
So why not let my old pal, Governor Schwarzenegger tell it to you straight about what we’re doing here in California to prepare for what we already see coming our way:
Unlike the astoundingly large group of dumbed-down states in the USA who happily have their heads up their own asses when it comes to sharing the climate change facts with their citizens and actually taking the bold actions necessary, California isn’t lying and isn’t delaying. If we have any chance at all of stopping catastrophic climate change from making the future a moot point for your kids, the rest of the country is going to have to follow our lead with emissions cuts, energy efficiency and renewable energy use.
Many of them will have to be dragged kicking and screaming – as usual – but if we have to go caveman on them to help save ourselves, then so be it.
Creative Greenius 