As if from the heavens above, The Word, appeared immaculately and impeccably on some of Hermosa Beach’s signature buildings last night. The forces of darkness who support this dirty, climate wrecking, grotesquery of ugliness of a project might want to buy some of those E&B Blackout Curtains offered by the oil company as their mitigation
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
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.
As the climate change crisis goes from bad to worse (while the deniers get nuttier and more cult-like with each passing day) and Australia gives Californians an advanced sneak preview at what is without a doubt headed our way sooner than you expect, your Creative Greenius has only gotten more Fired Up, Ready to Go!
That’s right my friends, while others are cutting back, downsizing, slowing down and pulling back, your Creative Greenius is not only Ready to Go, I’m already going, baby, and I’m moving at Obama speed.
So buckle up and hang on while I take you for a little trip with the Greenius to the places I’ve been and the places I’m going…
The L.A. Times has a newsbreaking interview with new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in this morning’s paper. Secretary Chu gave the Times an exclusive Tuesday and the paper says he warned about the threats from climate change more “bluntly” and in more “dire terms” than he ever has before.
But don’t look for this big story on the front page because it’s not there. It’s buried in the California section and it’s given just a fraction of the ink that the “news” about the tiny town of Newman gets for its move to ban a book with too much cursing in it.
If you want to hear some real serious cursing you should be hearing the string your Creative Greenius is putting together over what a lousy job the Times is doing with the biggest story of our generation.
Continue reading ➞ News FAIL – L.A. Times Blows Global Warming Story
So let me get this straight – while those of us who are trying to lead greener lives, have been cutting our carbon footprints and working with our cities, states and the rest of the USA to help them do likewise, Killer Coal has been playing us for chumps and wiping out all our efforts every single second of every day. Can you believe the nerve of those dirty backstabbers? How long did they think we were gonna put up with that?
The Killer Coal Family is waging war against the rest of our families – and those gangsters will not stop until we take them down. So as the head of the Galliani family I called a emergency meeting of the five families – who will all go nameless due to their fifth amendment privileges and a patriotic penchant for privacy. Therefore I’ll be speaking for the group. Everyone thought that was a great idea, and I went along. I know how to smell consensus when it occurs.
At our meeting we all agreed that it’s time to go to the mattresses and declare war against coal until we kill them and put them out of business. We had a vote and then we had a toast. In fact we had several toasts. Everybody felt very good about our decision. We like it when we get to take on bullies.
We’re claiming self-defense since rubbing them out is the only way we can stop them from doing away with all of us. We already gave the Killer Coal Family a chance to stop disrespecting us and make things right – but what did those climate-changing con artists do instead? They aimed more smokestacks at us and dumped toxic waste in our neighborhoods while they paid off the cops and the justice system to get away with it. That just ain’t right. And it ain’t a wise way to go when dealing with wise guys like us.
So now we have no choice but war, and I say let’s do what we gotta do. Hey, it’s not personal. It’s strictly business. And during economic downturns like this we take our business much more seriously.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t have lots of fun and plenty of laughs the whole time we’re destroying their way of life, their business and their futures. So leave the guns, and bring the canolli.
For more than a year now in this blog I’ve been researching and reporting on climate change, energy and transportation issues and related environmental stories covering them on both a personal and a global perspective. I haven’t been breaking any hard news, I’ve just been spreading the news that doesn’t get enough attention and adding my take on top of it for the majority of my readers who don’t have the time to dig as deep as I do.
I have to admit I’ve shared a pretty dire world view when it comes to the current and coming impacts of climate change.
That’s what happens when you start each morning reading blog’s like Joseph Romm’s Climate Progress and following the work of Dr. James Hansen and the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.
But during this same past year, I’ve also been attending the meetings of the South Bay Cities Green Task Force.
I’m there as one of the only independent citizens – and of course as the Creative Greenius, but I’m mostly there because I’m an aspiring policy wonk and I eat the content of these meetings up. The truth is, I’m unabashedly fascinated by and truly interested in the work they’re doing. And the work they’re doing brings California’s leading edge fight against global warming right into my neighborhood and into my home. It is, as the cliche puts it, where the rubber meets the road, and the road is the street I live on.
As we move into the final month of the year 2008 I keep looking up at my rooftop longingly.
Even with the extension of the solar tax credit which came as an unexpected bonus along with the $700 billion bailout and the big increase in how much you can claim, I still think dipping into my cash reserve to the tune of $29 grand for the up front cost of my solar system would be loony tunes at the moment – and with the economy putting us into this Not So Great Depression I’m not really interested in adding that much in debt in order to pay for my panels.
Continue reading ➞ The Further Adventures of The Solangelist
While the rest of America has been transfixed by the spiraling, ever-worsening economic crisis, the auto industry bailout and the Obama transition team leaks about Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s new roles in the Administration, I’ve been in Chicago engrossed in meetings with people I promised I’d never admit having met with. So lets just say I went for the blues and the BBQ.
It’s not like they gave me any secret briefing information or anything. And it’s not like they told me what to write – not in so many words anyway. But if you’d like to help the President hit the ground running – and be able to keep up with him along the way – here’s what you need to know.
Continue reading ➞ Ten Things President Obama Needs You To Know Right Now
A furiously venom-filled John McCain angrily admitted to this blogger in a just-finished phone interview that he has been in a state of unstoppable rage that has kept him terminally pissed off at the United States of America ever since we chose to end the Vietnam war. “You’re damn right I am, you little jerk,” he said.
Before I could even respond he exploded again like Yosemite Sam. “You’re ALL a bunch of little jerks!” he screeched out to me on my VOIP line,” all you word happy blah-blah-bloogers – especially you environmentalists.” He spat out the word as if talking about a pedophile, but I could sense he was using air quotes at the other end.
Creative Greenius 