How to resolve AdBlock issue? Understand threat and opportunity
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- Published: Friday, 06 May 2022 11:10
Photo submitted.
Dr. Robert Dodge MD.
By Dr. Robert Dodge
We can no longer continue to wage war over finite resources and survive in a nuclear-armed world. This spring, as those before, beckons a season of renewal and opportunity for the future.
A tale of two meetings
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- Published: Friday, 22 April 2022 10:15
Photo provided.
Barbara Bowman.
By Barbara Bowman
Our first tale concerns the April 6 Ojai Planning Commission meeting. The purpose of this gathering was for the commission to review and approve restoration plans submitted by the owners of El Roblar Hotel, formerly The Oaks at Ojai, at 122 E. Ojai Ave.
A Fool's Tale -
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- Published: Friday, 01 April 2022 10:44
Ventura City Council — which then included now-Ventura County Supervisor Matt LaVere and now-District Attorney Erik Nasarenko — secretly voted on Sept. 9, 2019, to sue thousands of people in Ojai Valley over their right to use water.
The basis of the city of Ventura’s claim is its assertion of a “pueblo” water right. Without yet providing evidence of this claim, the Walnut Creek attorneys of Best Best and Krieger have stated they have “information and belief” that will prove it has the right to Ojai Valley’s water.
At the status conference hearing with Los Angeles County Judge William F. Highberger on March 16, BBK attorney Shawn Hagerty, representing the city of Ventura, said Fernando Tico was the successor to the land originally belonging to the San Buenaventura Mission. Mr. Hagerty has yet to explain his belief in court.
This tongue-in-cheek version of the story was provided to the Ojai Valley News anonymously, just in time for April Fool’s Day:
Op-Ed: Humans are responsible for our Earth
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- Published: Friday, 01 April 2022 10:24
Photo by Bob Ward
Joanne Ntuk of Ojai stands at the Ojai Global Climate Vigil at the “Y” in Ojai on Saturday, March 26.
By Joanne Ntuk
Re: Fridays for Future’s Ojai Global Climate Vigil held March 25 to 26:
I’m a member of a local group of Ojai people who advocate for awareness of how climate change has affected our world. On a local level, we can help heal the Earth of the negative effects of climate change.
Time to jump to a healthier planet
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- Published: Friday, 25 March 2022 07:48
By Alasdair Coyne
A new report last month from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) issued another in a long line of serious warnings to policy makers around the planet: Global heating is still on the increase, and its dire effects are growing fast, both in frequency and in intensity.
Every time over the past decades that the IPCC has issued new findings, it is always painting a more dangerous picture than before of global heating’s effect on the ecological balance of our little blue planet as it spins around the sun.
We are in a decade of critical importance to the future health of all life on Earth. We only have these 10 years to turn around our dependence on fossil fuels to power our planetary society, as the damage done by burning these fuels might otherwise increase to where the heating is, with our current knowledge, unstoppable.
Here are some news items from the last few weeks to describe some of the new tools being put into place to assist in our response to the climate crisis, and to bring you updates on recent scientific studies.
U.S. and French scientists used 2019 and 2020 data from a European satellite to evaluate methane plumes from fossil-fuel facilities worldwide. They found enough “super-emitter” methane leaks to represent around 10% of all methane leaks from oil and gas operations worldwide. The good news is that these gigantic methane leaks are reasonably cheap to seal, particularly as methane is 25 times more potent at heating the planet than carbon dioxide (which is by far the largest climate-changing gas, by volume). Other giant methane emitters include landfills.
In 2023, the Environmental Defense Fund is preparing to launch a new methane-sniffing satellite that will be able to monitor methane from 80% of the world’s oil and gas operations.
California, working with NASA and others, will also be launching satellites to measure climate-heating emissions.
The federal Securities and Exchange Commission is embarking on a new directive from the Biden administration to require all publicly traded companies to disclose their businesses’ climate footprints, and the climate-related risks they face.
It’s time for us — to jump! A new climate initiative asks people to take six fairly simple steps,
which, if widely adopted, could make a large impact on our nation’s global-heating footprint.
“The Jump” campaign’s six steps:
— Eat a largely plant-based diet, with healthy portions and no waste.
— Buy no more than three new items of clothing per year.
— Keep electrical products for at least seven years.
— Take no more than one short-haul flight every three years and one long-haul flight every eight years.
— Get rid of personal motor vehicles if you can — and if not, keep hold of your existing vehicle for longer.
— Make at least one life shift to nudge the system, such as moving to a green-energy electricity provider, insulating your home, or changing your pension supplier.
While the nation’s new solar, wind and battery-storage facilities completed in 2021 created 28 gigawatts of new green energy, this rate must quickly double to meet President Biden’s goal for a carbon-free power sector by 2035. Interestingly, Texas far outdid California in new green energy in 2021. Texas completed 7,352 megawatts of new wind, solar and storage facilities, about three times that achieved in California last year. Texas also has 50% more such facilities being built or developed than does California currently.
The task of moving supplies of renewable energy around the nation is a daunting one, requiring long-distance transmission facilities almost everywhere. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is now poised to take a role in the green energy revolution, and must play a part in approving transmission line construction costing maybe $350 billion over 10 years.
And for a look at what still needs to change right away — worldwide government subsidies to fossil-fuels projects and other projects damaging to wildlife (such as deforestation) are still flowing at the rate of $1.8 trillion per year. That’s 2% of global gross domestic product. Governments will be asked at 2022’s COP-15 biodiversity conference in China to eradicate such environmentally harmful subsidies by 2030.
So now to end on a genuinely happy note. Climate science is always expanding, and the word until recently was that after building a carbon-free society, it would still take many decades for the dangerous climate storms, fires, floods and heatwaves to begin to drop.
But recent re-evaluations are saying that this period could be as short as three to five years. So, when we reach zero emissions, global temperatures will stop rising very quickly. But please remember — we still have only this decade to do most of the heavy lifting toward getting to zero emissions. Time is short. Delays must not be permitted. Please work to help this shift moving forward.
— Alasdair Coyne of Upper Ojai is conservation director of Keep Sespe Wild.
Forager: He never stops
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- Published: Friday, 25 March 2022 07:30
Photo by Kimberly Rivers
Steve Sprinkel. Sept.
by Steve Sprinkel
Otterbein is almost always political. There’s not too much he does that is not aligned with social responsibility. At least he’s a lot more responsible than I am. I’m the broad-brush rationalizer compared to Jeff Otterbein. He’s so earnest he talked me into growing a crop of pinto beans once. You can buy these things for $1.79 a pound organic, but Jeff wanted to know what it takes to be self-sufficient. So we planted a whole lot of them. Twice. I gave Otter this pitiful abandoned triangle on the western corner on the farm and he was so dutiful towards the beans we planted 3,000 square feet the next year. Francisco Tirado was inspired by this venture because he grew them in Mexico. They lasted the Otterbeins a whole year and they eat a lot of beans.
OP-ED: From corrupted to trusted: (Liberal) America’s shifting perceptions of the FDA
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- Published: Friday, 11 March 2022 09:31
By John W. Roulac
Until recently, most Americans had little trust in the Food and Drug Administration. But when COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, a scared nation deepened in tribal identity and then turned its faith and trust over to the FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
OP-ED: Naysayers will have our children cold in dark houses
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- Published: Friday, 25 February 2022 09:08
By Alan Greenberg, Special to the Ojai Valley News
This is in response to Alasdair Coyne's Feb. 18 letter to the editor, “Keep Earth habitable.”
Op-Ed — Jonathan Gunter: 'A new Ojai hotel is no way to fund affordable housing'
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- Published: Saturday, 15 January 2022 13:10
By Jonathan Gunter
Black hats vs. white hats are a sideshow. At today’s price, we couldn’t have bought our house. Most of us couldn’t. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s laws SB8 and SB9 risk our financial futures and unique community. Expect some pushback!
OP-Ed by retired head of Thacher School Michael Mulligan: Inaccurate report and symbolic acts at Thacher will not address real causes of the problem
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- Published: Thursday, 12 August 2021 20:12
Submitted photo
Michael Mulligan, former head of The Thacher School in Ojai from 1992 to 2018, when he retired.
By Michael Mulligan
The Thacher School and community are going through a difficult, wrenching time as they seek to grapple with allegations of sexual abuse, both in the distant past but also continuing to today. Like everyone else who loves Thacher, I want to see it come through this terrible experience a better community. Most importantly, I want those who suffered abuse and trauma to find healing and a positive way forward. The allegations of harm unearthed over the last year are devastating. I’m heartsick to know that students suffered, and my deepest compassion and sympathies are with those who were hurt.
OP-ED by Ojai Councilman William Weirick: 'Ventura's adjudication lawsuit is ethically and financially indefensible'
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- Published: Thursday, 05 August 2021 22:19
By William Weirick, Ojai City Council member
Hard to find the best descriptor after witnessing staff on Aug. 2 maneuvering the Ventura City Council into plunking down another cool million on the fool’s errand otherwise known as the Ventura River watershed adjudication. “Leading by the nose ring” or herding “further down the chute” are two that come to mind. It is clear listening to councilmembers’ remarks that they are being advised to stay “inside the bubble” in terms of big-picture information. In other words, staying away from interacting with different points of view because of the litigation they have authorized.
Ventura’s lawyers have been arguing that everyone needs to show their cards all at the same time, while also arguing that they had legions of experts and studies supporting the notion of tight connectivity between all underground aquifers and surface flows at the city’s well field in the Ventura River at Foster Park. In other words, they have been arguing that even though the city sued the entire Ojai Valley partially based on this notion, they did not need to reveal their evidence until those being sued are forced to show their cards simultaneously.