
My friend Elizabeth is from the South Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga, an exotic locale long fixed in my memory with images of Polynesian paradise.
Tonga has sadly been in the news lately after an inter-island ferry sank on August 5 drowning over 70 people. It’s a huge tragedy in such a small place and it has saddened all Tongans around the world.
When I first met Elizabeth I had no idea that there were so many Tongan Americans living in large communities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Dallas and other cities across the USA. Elizabeth is producing a documentary film on the history of Tongans immigrating to America and she knows a lot about the subject.
But surprisingly, a subject Elizabeth didn’t know a lot about is Tonga’s frontline role as a victim of the climate change crisis.


As my beloved state of California’s driftless and leaderless economy was being driven deeper and deeper into the toilet by the least impressive occupants of Sacramento in modern history, I hopped in my del Sol Greeniusmobile and motored to downtown Los Angeles last month headed for the palatial headquarters of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the MTA.


Overall it was a good workshop with lots of solid basic information for people who don’t know much about solar but are considering a solar electric system. Javier Burgos, a Project Manager with the SCE’s California Solar Initiative program gave a nice, if overlong and overwordy PowerPoint presentation.


