![By matthew.hickey (Flickr: [1]) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://paulrelis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Windmill_Field_outside_Palm_Springs_California-crop.jpg)
California is addressing climate change more aggressively than perhaps any government entity on earth. With bold initiatives like its Global Warming Solutions Act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2020, its zero net energy requirements for new residential…
For those of you who may have missed it, here is a recording of Paul & Pico's conversation at the Lobero in October 2015.
by Margie Bushman, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network As many of you know, last week we hosted a public forum on the recent Paris Climate Talks at Antioch University Santa Barbara, featuring journalist Ethan Stewart of the Santa Barbara Independent, accompanied by…
![Pollution Fines. Image By EARTHWORKS (Aliso Canyon leak well pad 1 Credit: Earthworks) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://paulrelis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Aliso_Canyon_leak_well_pad_1_Credit-_Earthworks_23594167450.jpg)
The oil spill caused by rupture of the Plains All American Pipeline, Volkswagen's violation of California’s clean air standards, and now months of methane releases from SoCalGas Company’s Aliso Canyon storage facility--these incidents will produce hundreds of millions (if not…
I attended and spoke at the Los Angeles VerdeXchange Conference on January 25. Of all the environmental conferences I’ve attended over the years, none rivals this one for its consistently high quality speakers and participants, the care given to the…
![By Michal Osmenda from Brussels, Belgium [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://paulrelis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/1024px-Watching_clouds_from_an_airplane_2093712323.jpg)
A few months ago I was looking down from my window seat from 35,000 feet over western Oklahoma at a pock-marked landscape that stretched to the north as far as I could see. Little rectangles, some with water holding ponds,…
![By Russell Yarwood from Costa Mesa, United States (Cactus & Succulents Uploaded by Fæ) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://paulrelis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/1024px-Cactus__Succulents_183442603.jpg)
We’ve lived in lower Mission Canyon in Santa Barbara for 40 years now. It’s a compound consisting of a small California bungalow and two larger homes. We bought it with friends from our university days and created an environment of…
From when I was a boy growing up in nearby Long Beach until I was in my forties, I thought Los Angeles was a soulless city, ugly and mean. Skies in LA were an eerie, almost indescribable mix of gray…
I thought I would share thoughts about the role politics have played in my work to preserve and protect the environment over a 45-year timeframe. These thoughts are drawn from my recent book, Out of the Wasteland: Stories from the…
The November 21 edition of the NYT OP-ED page has a piece by Jeff Biggers, “Iowa’s Climate Change Wisdom.” Biggers writes that this historically conservative state with 99% of its landscape altered over the last one hundred years to accommodate…
On Friday I participated in a meeting with Mark Schapiro, author of Carbon Shock. Among the subjects Schapiro raised with our group is the increased scrutiny the insurance industry is giving to the impacts of climate change. Unlike the factors…
Several years ago I was in London on business and had a free afternoon. At the urging of my friend, the writer Pico Iyer, I visited the Tate Modern Art Museum on the Thames. My experience of the Tate was…
California MSW Organics Digester Prepares To Launch by Nora Goldstein reprinted from BioCycle. October 2015, Vol. 56, No. 9, p. 51 Construction is nearing completion, and all the equipment is installed at CR&R Inc.’s high solids anaerobic digester (AD) facility…
The Next Renewable Energy Resource for America by Paul Relis It has been a long time coming; a new renewable energy resource for America is at last emerging. Food waste we clean out from our refrigerators, the discards from supermarkets/…
Reflections of the Refugio Oil Spill by Paul Relis On the prompting of a friend, I went to Refugio Beach yesterday to walk the beach and see for myself the outcome of the "clean up." I walked about half-a-mile of…