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Climate-Wise Laguna With an appreciative nod to the ongoing Laguna water-wise campaign, a group of townspeople came together last summer to propose and advocate for steps to address climate change. We call ourselves Climate-Wise Laguna and have about a dozen members: retired and...

Scrooge’s Dewdrop Car Wash We all remember the recent drought in California. According to some authorities it was broken by last winter’s storms that dumped tons of snow on the mighty Sierras and provided a fair amount of rain even in the parched Southland. Still, California’s...

Art and Nature: That’s Laguna Laguna at its core and as many see it today is the result of sculpting Pacific forces, like wind and waves, and the works of artists who have immortalized in their creative renderings the beauty of its coves, headlands, coastal canyons, and hills....

Restoring an Estuary, Healing an Environment At last some positive, even inspiring news on the environmental front. With two-dozen California wildfires now nearly contained while parts of Texas, the Gulf Coast, and much of Puerto Rico struggle to recover from recent killer...

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,...