GREEN Reactor: Fresh GREENs

We mentioned last time that GREEN Reactor would be back in December with something fresh….. How about some Fresh GREENs?

Key West is loaded with old-timers like me who’ve long been involved across the spectrum of GREEN matters (not just environmental concerns, but also quality of life, social justice, equality, etc). However most of us realize that a significant chunk of our generation (the Boomers) has distorted the N in their GREEN credentials into a D and have since relegated the health of our world well below their GREED quotient.  And others have become so afraid of Teapublican backlash that they now pretty much shun their inner GREEN.

With all this drain on GREEN power, we find more and more that without an influx of YOUNG GREENs we’ll soon be regressing strongly toward those bad-old-days that Teapublicans so misguidedly adore. So in today’s column I’d like to focus on the young-uns.  Our world’s health ultimately stands or falls on their involvement! It’s nice to know that there are people under 40 who are taking up that slack that us old farts have increasingly allowed in the line.

A good place to start is with Alison Higgins here in the Key West area.  Alison came out of an extensive environmental college program in California, Australia and Seattle and quickly went to work for the Nature Conservancy and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

This brought her to the Keys, where she executive directed the highly respected Florida Keys GLEE (Green Living and Energy Education) organization.

Recently the City of Key West hired Alison as its first Sustainability Coordinator.  I can speak from experience (as a member of the City’s Sustainability Advisory Board) that her leadership in that role has pushed the City’s operations quickly in important directions, including heavy involvement in the process of implementing major improvements in the City’s recycling rate, a renewed focus on sustainable planning, and significant community outreach on GREEN matters.

Without a doubt, if Alison had not come aboard with her skills, her experience and her drive, Key West would still be trying to get off the sustainability starting line.

For our next Fresh GREEN spotlight we’ll jump from the Keys all the way over to the San Francisco Bay Area and meet Laci Videmski (his first name is pronounced “Lah-tsi”).  After Laci’s undergraduate work at Cal Poly, his graduate studies lead to a Masters degree in architecture from Harvard.

He worked in the Boston area for a while, then volunteered with a UN development project in Cameroon.  His GREEN genes piqued, he returned to the Bay Area and co-founded a carbon-neutral compute and storage service that uses renewable energy strategies.

Subsequently through Laci’s research, he recognized that the engineered system of water delivery and flood control in California is the largest in the world, with water moved to water scarce regions from places of abundance — maintaining the largest agricultural economy in North America.  So Laci joined up with the Resource Renewal Institute to do his part to update the California Water Atlas  (promoting efficient open access to data needed for ecologically-sound planning throughout the region).

Laci was also a founder of a group that has been discussed in this column in the past.  Here’s his take on how it went down at a dinner gathering:

“Here we were, technologists passionately connecting over these [GREEN] topics, yet unable to cite instances of such engagement in the Open Government and civic hacker movement. That night, was the beginning of a group called Nerds for Nature and, since then, we have been exploring the idea of sending nerds not just to City Hall, but to our bureaus of land, water, and energy.”

Our space HERE is limited, so let’s finish with a big batch of even Fresher GREENs: the Greenpeace Student Network:

The Greenpeace Student Network is an alliance of passionate leaders fighting environmental crimes with grassroots power. Armed with top organizing tools, expert guidance, and an innovative student training system, Greenpeace Student Network activists are a real force in the global movement for change.

The Network provides summer programs for students to be trained to expose climate deniers, confront Big Dirty Corporations, press their campuses to demand clean energy and a host of other righteous GREEN philosophical and tactical curricula. The network is a welcome resource for Fresh GREENs who will lead generations that will be most affected by the hapless disregard for the future from The Big Dirty.

We just looked at just a few examples of the many fresh GREENs who will be – or are already – keeping our eye on the GREEN prize.  I feel good about them and the many many others coming along with them and behind them.  They will sweep the clueless Teapublican masses aside and get us back on track toward a progressive GREEN future.  If YOU don’t want to invest sweat equity in these oh-so-important efforts, please step aside and applaud them as they move us forward!