The April Green Issue
It’s been a pattern. After completing Green issues in the past I’ve felt a mixture of sadness and optimism. This one is no exception. I interviewed Paul Hawken, an extraordinary environmental thinker and visionary. He reminds us that throughout human evolution we’ve lived with CO2 levels below 300, but now if you include all greenhouse gases we’re at 490—uncharted territory. Yet he’s all about solutions, and his Project Draw down maps them clearly. Most are much simpler and more scalable than previously imagined. We don’t need the us vs. them doom-and-gloom language—we have a clear way forward now, so we can get to work on the challenge of reversing global warming, the one common ground that binds us, the challenge that subsumes all others. I hope you enjoy the interview and the pictorial based on Project Drawdown, with a sampling of solutions that will lead to global cooling.
The onset of 5G wireless technology and the impending Internet of Things is something that alarms me very much. The bottom line—we’re about to get zapped with electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation in ways we have never experienced. It will be sustained and inescapable. I fear that as a species we’re unwitting guinea pigs in a long-term study on the effects of wireless radiation. Who is protecting us? Not the telecom industry and not the FCC. I pray that people wake up to this issue and read Daniel DeBaun’s article, for starters. Dan is an insider who has worked in the telecommunications industry for 30 years.
I thank Dan Flores and Camilla Fox for their thoughtful pieces about coyotes. Sadly, I know many people who’ve lost pets to coyotes. Yet I’ve come to understand that coyotes are part of the landscape and despite centuries of human attempts to extinguish them they’re cunningly resilient and have something to teach us about coexistence.
OSC2 is a group of mostly local natural products industry companies who’ve aggregated to create a new model of sustainability. Thank you to those companies and to Kat Schuett-Reue for her terrific essay. And thank you Lisa Durant for reminding us about the perils of plastic and telling us how France is phasing out plastic eating utensils for the greater good. Corey Hill explains the importance of planning a green burial as a final environmental act.
Kirsten Andrews-Schwind has contributed a clear explanation of how Community Choice Energy started in Marin and rapidly expanded throughout California. Kudos to Shawn Marshall and the late Charles
McGlashan, who pioneered this positive trend. Anthony Karefa RogersWright teaches us about the paradox of radicalism and introduces us to the Valve Turners. People are mobilizing. I was inspired by the March for Our Lives rally I witnessed on March 24 and captured in our Green Scene. Go kids!
We look forward to seeing you on Earth Day as well as at the New Living Expo in San Mateo.
We live in interesting times and pour our enthusiasm into Common Ground. If you appreciate our work, please show your support by patronizing our advertisers. And please consider becoming an advertiser yourself. If the social media scandals in the headlines reveal anything, it’s the importance of local independent media.
Onward and upward,
ROB SIDON, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR IN CHIEF