By

Reading in on Climate Change Intervention Yikes, summer’s almost over, and I’ve read only one of the four books I intended to read cover to cover. I want to bring all four to the attention of readers by sharing a bit about each volume. The book I read front to back was one by...

Climate Change: Cities Must Take the Lead Shortly after the White House announced on June 1 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement did Congress fly into action to abate global warming? No. Did the Environmental Protection Agency double down on...

What Gets Measured, Gets Managed “Lose five pounds,” my doctor said after this year’s annual physical. I’ve lost them and found them again. Part of my difficulty is that I avoid getting on the scale. Unless I regularly measure my weight, I know I’ll not be able to better manage...

MacGillivrary registered that these long-standing threats to ocean health have recently been compounded by the new administration in Washington, D.C. The citizenry, he emphasized, would play the key role in conservation by activism and environmentally conscious lifestyles.

Responding Locally to a Global Peril Eight years ago this month, the Laguna Beach City Council received a plan to combat global warming from the former Environmental Committee. After some modifications, Council later voted unanimously to approve the document. At that time, 2009,...

Push to Ban Smokes on Trails We need to get their butts out of there. The “butts” are cigarette refuse and “there” refers to the dry, flammable chaparral atop Aliso Peak and inland near the trail approaching Laguna Sur in Laguna Niguel. Those of us edgy about wild fires along our...

Take a Stand Over Banning Ranch The 895 homes, 75-room hotel and a hostel planned would not be erected in our town, but in neighboring Newport Beach. Newport Banning Ranch LLC (comprising an oil company and investment firm) owns the 401-acre site and stands to make mega bucks if...

Seasick: Corals, Kelp, and Critters This past Sunday’s New York Times published the article “Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists.” Laguna does not have coral reefs, so what does this have to do with our small city? Plenty. The climate-related ocean...

The Day Grandmother Ocean Cried “Grandmother Ocean and this coast” have been sacred and life-giving to my people for thousands of years, declared Fred Collins, administrator for the Northern Chumash Council, who went on to praise Dr. Charles Lester, executive director of the...

  Transpacific Drought and Plastics  When I pick up trash at our local Table Rock Beach, most of what I gather consists of plastics: empty single-use water bottles, snack packaging, and some bags. Since we live along a fairly developed side of the world’s largest ocean, I have...

Three Amigos of Aliso Creek No, this is not a tale about three South Laguna gunslingers dueling at high noon with a sheriff’s posse from “big town,” some four miles north of here. Instead, armed with nothing more than our thoughts and dedication to protecting our local ocean,...

Aliso Creek Back to the Future $1.6 million! That’s what was recently paid for William Wendt’s painting, “The Old Coast Road.” The amount was more than twice the anticipated selling price for this iconic work of art. This brought to mind a color plate I saw long ago of Wendt’s...

When Ideology Trumps Facts In the ongoing, fractious city council election, Lagunans have been jolted by Jon Madison’s inability to validate implausible, phony academic achievements. Lagunans received another jolt at the Firebrand Media-organized candidate forum on Oct. 14 when...

  Don’t drive a Tesla . . . unless you’re prepared to be utterly smitten by its features and performance and sticker-shocked at the $100,000 plus price tag. I drove the Model S recently and experienced both shock and awe. As a proud, Volvo-driving, tree-hugger living on the...

  For those of us who like hiking, south Laguna offers a labyrinth of scruffy, scenic trails.  Thanks to the County of Orange, the South Laguna Civic Association (full disclosure: I’m a board member), and other environmentally minded groups and citizens, public access to...