FEATURED BLOG POST: The Road to Being an Environmentalist

Welcome to my blog! I will be focusing mostly on climate change and environmental issues, but occasionally will veer off or explore other community issues and invite others to blog. This blog is longer because I want to share my "back story" first.

Blogging is the fitting next step to my personal quest for new ways to address environmental issues. My initiation to becoming an environmentalist began in March 1970 when I was at an emerging issues brainstorming for the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and I timidly suggested that we ditto a sheet for the housewife telling where to take items to be recycled. Joyce Leonard immediately offered to write the garden section, and Marie Niemeyer said she would write it. Jim Webb, whom I had worked for at Sunset Magazine took me to lunch with Don Fleming, Atherton Typography, the Sunset typesetters. Don said, “You have a tiger by the tail!”

Little did I know how this would change my life. “If You Want To Save Your Environment…START AT HOME!” was the first of the environmental guidebooks, and it focused on what you can do as an individual. Pioneer ecologist Paul B. Sears happened to retire to Taos, New Mexico that summer and serendipitously moved in to the same condo complex as my mother. He readily agreed to write the foreword. As volunteers we ended up selling more than 85,000 copies in all 50 states and 35 foreign countries, it came out in hardcover edition, we netted more than $35,000 and set up the Paul B. Sears Environmental Research Endowment thru the national AAUW, and they are still giving grants from it.  

Then in 1973 I became employee #3 for the fledgling Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD).  Formed in 1972 after a vigorous campaign convincing voters to tax themselves to save open space. I initiated its Public Communications and Governmental Liaison program, which gave me lots of experience in working with the press and governmental agencies to promote saving open space.

Fast forward to 2005. I had continued to be involved in environmental issues, but I started looking for new ways to address these challenges. I had brainstormings at my house, and at about the fifth one, Santa Clara County retired planner Don Weden, with whom I had worked with at the MROSD, mentioned a presentation he was going to make at the new Be the Change program sponsored by Acterra. I said, “Don, you are it!”

He titled it “Wings of Change: Adapting Our Communities to the Changing Realities of the 21st  Century,” which include global warming, population growth, increased economic competiveness, the growing Baby Boomer generation and rising energy costs. Sponsored by AAUW and more than 27 community groups and businesses, we had more than 300 people at the HP Auditorium on a foggy Saturday morning.

Sandra Lonnquist, then President and CEO of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, came up to me and said, “We need to bring this to the Chamber!” And so began the embryonic meetings that led to what became Palo Alto Business Goes Green (PABGG). After searching for a keynote speaker for our November 8 inaugural event at Arrillaga Alumni Center at Stanford, in late August I emailed Susan Frank, California Alliance for a Green Business Community,  asking her opinion about an idea I had. She responded suggesting world-acclaimed climate scientist Stephen Schneider from Stanford.

He was in Australia on sabbatical, but was coming back to Palo Alto for a few days before going on to South Africa. He was giving a talk at Silicon Valley Leadership Group so Debbie Mytels and Nancy Peterson offered to go. They discovered that he was available for our November 8 date, and I made an appointment to meet him when he returned from South Africa.

 And so began this incredible journey as I became a Steve Schneider Groupie! When Mark Sabin, Nancy Peterson and I met with him, the first words were, “Call me Steve.” Next he described his treatment for mantle cell lymphoma starting in 2001 and how he and his wife, Terry Root, also a climate scientist, used their climate research methodology to research his cancer and the treatment for it. He wrote an incredible book, The Patient from Hell.    

His keynote address, “Business and Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities,” at Focus Palo Alto, sponsored by the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and Stanford University, on November 8, 2006, was a huge success. In 2008 I asked if he would be willing to have regular conversations to be published in the Palo Alto Daily News quarterly tabloid, “Bay Area Green," and he readily agreed. My goal was to create a dialogue between Stanford and Palo Alto to exchange climate change information, studies and projects. My cohort Lorna Fear joined me on this project, which ended in January 2010 when the Daily News discontinued publishing this excellent publication.

I arranged for Palo Alto Weekly editor Jay Thorwaldson to "converse" with Steve about his latest book, Science as a Contact Sport. It was a delightful, informative conversation. 

Sadly, Steve passed away on a flight from Stockholm to London. I miss his emails telling me not to “worry about those folks” when I sent him an email about some scurrilous comments from climate change deniers.

Wanting to know more about climate change, I signed up for the Stanford Continuing Studies class “Coping with Climate Change: Life After Copenhagen,” taught by Terry Root and Meg Caldwell. Steve gave one of the lectures and often came to class. Serendipitously, I met artist/TV host Michael Killen also in the class.. When he told me about an environmental art exhibition he was involved in at Half Moon Bay, plus the TV interviewshe had done (close to 500 over the years), I thought, “He is not for real,” so I called a couple of people to check up on him. I can assure you that he is “for real”!

His modus operandi was, and is, to interview climate change experts and then to translate what they said into paintings. These interviews morphed into “Painting to Change the World,” which bcame an exciting new way to create awareness about climate change and its impacts. One of Michael’s  first interviews was with Steve, and he spoke at our kickoff event, “Can Civilizations Survive? A Search for Solutions” at the Midpeninsula Community Media Center.

Steve was quite enthusiastic about the idea of using art to convey climate change messages. I received this email from him when he was on a plane traveling somewhere in the Far East. “Thank you, Carroll and Michael, for your out-of-the- box thinking and creative ways to align the forces of art with those of analysis and science--an essential union to strengthen by group activities and events. Thanks for your caring and working to provide people emotionally tangible ways to become aware of and eventually practice sustainability. Cheers, Steve.”

Watch for more exciting news about Michael and “Painting to Change the World.”

And now I have this terrific opportunity to blog on Patch. I just discovered that Steve blogged for The Huffington Post.

I am looking forward to using this blog and other social media to increase awareness about climate change impacts. I invite you to join me on this new and innovative journey always keeping Steve’s words in mind: “The question is: Will it be catastrophic?  We’ve dawdled, and if we dawdle more it will get even worse. It’s time to make a move.”