California Scrooge

What did you get for the holidays?
Due to California’s unprecedented financial crisis, the environmental, scientific, education, transportation and construction community got one big lump of coal.  Were we naughty this year?  Not hardly.  The naughty were the state legislature and the Governor, which both failed to agree on a budget plan that met the laugh [...]

Restoring the Bay

 The  Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission unanimously approved a new Bay Restoration Plan on Thursday.  Dr. Shelley Luce, executive director of the Bay Commission, and her dedicated staff put together the new recommendations: the long-awaited sequel to the original 1995 plan.  Since the mid-90s, a lot has happened to help restore the Bay. Hyperion and [...]

Grand Slams

Thursday’s appointments of Hilda Solis as Secretary of Commerce and Prof. Jane Lubchenco as chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric  Administration (NOAA) weren’t just strong for the environment.  They were two grand slams.  In the same inning.
Whom would you choose over Solis to catalyze the green jobs movement in America?  She’s been great on [...]

And You Thought S.M. Bay Was Bad

Winter is upon us.  Cold temperatures.  Rain. Mudslides.  The first snow of the year.  Bad driving.  And the holiday tradition of an ungodly amount of trash flushed into local bays and ending up on our beaches.  Trash is what you can see.  The fecal bacteria counts explode to levels that microbiology labs have trouble measuring [...]

Something Fishy

The FDA released a report urging the Feds to give contaminated fish a break. After all, the cardiac benefits of eating fish versus a Big Mac are well documented.
As usual, the FDA misses the point in its recommendations.
As a reminder, the FDA are the same guys that recommended an “unsafe” DDT level in fish of [...]

Tourist Trap

I spent the last week on the Sea of Cortez with 19 other Aspen Institute Catto Fellows. I was fortunate enough to receive the two-year energy and the environment fellowship along with environmental leaders from all over the world and all professional sectors. Our latest session took us to La Paz.
On our first night in [...]

California Academy of Sciences

I ventured with the family to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park the day after Thanksgiving. No one else, other than the two quarter-mile lines of folks that put Disneyland to shame, had similar ideas.
I had read so much about the largest public LEED Platinum-rated facility on Earth that I [...]