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Readers Write: Rain, Streets and Flooding Creeks in City Heights

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Urban development, environmental mitigation and quality of life in the time of climate change

By John Stump

It’s happened again, as predicted. The City of San Diego’s long troubled Wightman Street Park flooded on January 5 and was under three feet of water again! Neighboring houses were flooded again and may be ruined.

In the 1920s this area in what is now known as City Heights was an unincorporated area in the county of San Diego. It contained a small lake, dance hall and other rural amusements. The City of San Diego annexed the area and built a realigned University Avenue.   [Read more…]

The Earthships Have Landed: Inside New Mexico’s Off-Grid Community Made from Trash

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By Yes! staff / Yes! Magazine

This short film directed by Flora Lichtman and Katherine Wells for the podcast The Adaptors takes you inside the Earthships of Taos, New Mexico—a community of off-grid homes made from trash.

After studying architecture, Earthships creator Michael Reynolds decided he wanted to experiment with different materials. “We build out of trees, but we don’t want to get rid of them,” says Reynolds, explaining how the project began 30 years ago. “We want to get rid of garbage, so why don’t we try to build out of garbage? It started as kind of a contrived effort to recycle, and has ended up the best way I know of to build, regardless of recycling.”
  [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: December 2015 – Tornados, Floods Kill Hundreds

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Christmas 2015 Notable for Extreme Weather Throughout the US

Record high temperatures on Christmas day, as much as 30 degrees F above normal, were experienced up and down the eastern portion of the US. At the same time, tornadoes destroyed homes and lives in the nation’s midsection and south. December 2015 saw more than 2,600 record high temperatures; major metropolitan areas in the Northeast saw some of the warmest Christmas Eves and Days on record.

On Christmas Eve temperatures were 10 to 15 degrees higher than previous records. It was 71 F in New York City, and the same in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.   [Read more…]

Pinyon-Juniper Forests: BLM’s False Claims to Virtue

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By Will Falk

Once I recovered from the shock I experienced witnessing the carnage produced by a Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) so-called “pinyon-juniper treatment project” just south of Spruce Mountain in Nevada, all I wanted was the destruction to stop. In order to stop the destruction, we have to ask the question: “Why are they doing this?”   [Read more…]

Top 10 Political Hopes for 2016

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It’s a new year and a big one for politics. As grim as 2015 was in many respects, this time of year begs for hope, and while I have a soft spot for the utopian, there are a few things that very well could happen that would bring some real tangible good to peoples’ lives and the planet. So here is my pragmatic political wish list for 2016:

1) That Donald Trump actually wins the Republican Presidential nomination and brings the entire Republican Party down when the sizable majority of Americans who hate his ideas vote out the party up and down the ticket….   [Read more…]

Could Your Dinner Be a Recipe from the Global Warmer’s Cookbook?

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Maybe It’s Time to Go ‘Climatarian’. Change your diet for a sustainable planet

By Ari LeVaux / AlterNet

About a third of the earth’s greenhouse gas pollution can be linked to food, including its production, processing, packaging, transport, storage and preparation. As climate change becomes a mainstream concern, and people keep obsessing about food, it was inevitable that a new flavor of eater would emerge—a buzzword that made the New York Times list of top new food words.   [Read more…]

SeaWorld Supporters Take on OB Rag and Frank Gormlie

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OB Rag Staff / OB Rag

There is a small group of SeaWorld supporters (apologists?) who have directly taken on the OB Rag and editor Frank Gormlie. They have a blog and posted a recent article calling out Gormlie by name in a headline refuting his claims about SeaWorld.

About a month ago, Gormlie wrote an article entitled “Why SeaWorld Can’t Build a Hotel at its Location on Mission Bay”, citing the proximity of the old Mission Bay landfill which is known to contain toxic materials.   [Read more…]

Progressive Activism in 2015: Addressing Climate Change in Many Different Ways

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Everybody is in favor of saving the environment these days. Or so they say.

The modern-day litmus test for whether an individual or company is serious about the environment comes down to whether or not they acknowledge climate change to be a man-made phenomenon.

This evolution of public consciousness didn’t come easy. It was built on the work of environmental activists and organizations. Throw a metaphorical rock in San Diego and chances are it will land at the feet of an organization working on some aspect of saving the planet. Today we’ll look back at the actions of the environmental movement locally, nationally, and internationally over the past year.   [Read more…]

Monsanto Polluted San Diego with PCBs and GMOs

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PCBs Pervade San Diego Bay

A San Diego group of attorneys is suing Monsanto to get millions of dollars for remediation projects to clean up San Diego Bay. Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) have been linked to cancer, neurological damage, thyroid problems and reproductive complications.

Monsanto is all about the profits even when it has knowledge that what it’s selling is poison. Cases have been filed in Federal Court in San Jose, Oakland and Spokane in addition to San Diego. Dozens more cities across America may soon follow suit.

Municipalities have been forced to shell out millions to clean up rivers, creeks and bays. It has been established that fishing in such places and consuming those fish is dangerous to human health. PCBs have shown up in breast milk and sea lions among other places. They are ubiquitous in our environment.   [Read more…]

The Realities of Implementing San Diego’s Climate Action Plan (Hold the Kumbaya)

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I suspect there might be more than one sore shoulder in local political circles after all the back-slapping going down after the San Diego City Council unanimously (with Scott Sherman absent) passed a Climate Action Plan on Tuesday.

The council vote was preceded by a mayoral press conference, an environmentalist rally (a half hour later, same basic location, many overlapping participants) and more than seventy speakers testifying in favor of the plan.

Never has a slam dunk been guided by so many hands.   [Read more…]

Benefits of Walking Are So Huge, Let’s Make Sure Everyone Can Do It

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By Jay Walljasper / Common Dreams

Mounting evidence that a daily walk helps prevent a host of serious diseases is beginning to influence debates about health care, community vitality, poverty, race and opportunity.

“The health benefits of walking are so overwhelming that to deny access to that is a violation of fundamental human rights,” declared Robert A. Bullard, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University,  in a keynote at the 2nd National Walking Summit held this fall in Washington, D.C.

“The pursuit of health is also about justice,” emphasized US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It’s about making sure “everyone in America has a good shot at being healthy.”   [Read more…]

Environmental Activists in Paris and San Diego: We Want More

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One hundred ninety nations reached an agreement in Paris this past weekend, theoretically setting the world on a path towards reducing carbon emissions. The San Diego City Council is poised to bless the long awaited Climate Action Plan. People took to the streets of Paris and the byways of Balboa Park over the weekend to affirm their commitment to seeing the challenges of climate change acted upon.

At last!–or so we’re told–there are processes in place to help save the planet, or at least humanity’s position at the top of the food chain. The truth, however, is much different that the hype. Consider these deals “hope” without the “change.”

Neither the international agreement nor the local plan would have happened without grassroots activism. A legacy of misinformation and misdirection directed by the fossil fuel industry and its adherents was countered by thousands of actions involving millions of people.   [Read more…]

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