Chevron Refinery, El Segundo, California

Here they are, folks, the very Hot List of Global Warming’s Worst Merchants of Death. The for-profit companies who put the money they rake in from burning fossil fuels ahead of the safety, welfare and well being of your kids, of your parents, of your grandparents and of everyone you hold near and dear.

They know exactly what lethal damage their products and their manufacture are responsible for, but the money always comes first for these contract killers – unless of course you’re asking them to pay the bill for that damage.

So let’s take a look, straight from our friends at the California Air Resources Board*, at the Top Emitters of Greenhouse Gases in California, for 2008.  I’ve specially highlighted the three out of ten that are within just 10 miles of my home.

1. Chevron Refinery, Richmond: 4,792,052 metric tons
2. Shell Oil Refinery, Martinez: 4,570,475 metric tons

3. BP Refinery, Carson: 4,504,286 metric tons (9 miles from my house)

4. Chevron Refinery, El Segundo: 3,603,446 metric tons (8.4 miles from my house)

5. Dynegy Power Plant, Moss Landing: 2,962,149 metric tons

6. Exxon Refinery, Torrance: 2,852,374 metric tons (5.7 miles from my house)

7. Valero Refinery, Benicia: 2,796,057
8. Tesoro Refinery, Martinez: 2,703,145
9. Southern Calif. Edison-Mountainview Power Plant, Redlands: 2,697,142
10. La Paloma Power Plant, McKittrick: 2,544,398

* Actually, the CARB let the polluters tally up their own numbers, so you best double these public numbers if you want to get the honest total.

Big Congrats to California’s very own Chevron, who spewed more than double the greenhouse gas of their nearest carbon collaborator-  and who does more damage to our health than any other refiner in California.  No one does more harm to the health of children and pregnant women than the Chevron polluters who use toy cars to fool kids into thinking they’re the good guys.  Shameless would be a step up for Chevron.

When you hear these professional global warmers lie and spin and bribe and con, just remember – they do it for money and there is no line they will not cross in exchange for that buck.  They’ll give money to your schools, your libraries, your hospitals – whatever you need, just so long as you let them destroy our climate from your home town.

But don’t worry.  Even if you’re not getting any of that Chevron or Exxon cash, rest assured you’ll be getting the death and destruction that comes from using their products – and from having them made anywhere on the map.

View Larger Map

If you look at the satellite views of these fatal facilities you’ll see acres and acres of unobstructed land just perfect to use for solar power generation.  All of these locations are already heavily hooked up to the grid and would need no new transmission lines to be feeding renewable energy into our electric mix instead of feeding more global warming into the already overheated atmosphere.

If our kids are going to survive and thrive as our generation has – all 10 of the facilities on this list – along with their counterparts all across the USA – must be gone from this map 10 years from now.

I voted for Barack Obama and I worked hard campaigning to get him elected. I would do it again and I’m proud of the small contribution I made to achieve change.

But I’m not happy with the President’s strategy or performance when it comes to our nation’s response to global warming. After the jump I’ll share what I said on Climate Progress about it yesterday, and you can read Bill McKibben’s comment there too.

But first, let’s listen to what McKibben told Grist TV yesterday about it:

Yesterday on his Climate Progress blog, Joe Romm, reported on the White House’s attempt to spin Obama’s Copenhagen participation in a post he called, “Breaking – US Will Announce Target For Cutting Carbon Emissions Before Copenhagen“  He ended his piece with a comment on whether Obama will go to Copenhagen himself and wrote,

“He ought to go, and I expect he will.”

And here’s what I wrote in reply:

He ought to do a lot more than just go.
He ought to lead the way on this issue.

He ought to acknowledge that the USA is only 4% of the world’s population, but that we contribute 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – and that number doesn’t even include all the emissions our companies outsource to be belched out in other countries. He ought to take responsibility for those emissions.

He ought to also acknowledge the damage we’re doing to the world’s most vulnerable nations with each day we continue to delay drastically cutting our GHG emissions.

And he ought to use his worldwide popularity and the media spotlight he enjoys to do the job reaching and teaching his audience the facts about global warming, generating the sense of urgency this issue demands.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

As the saying on the basketball court goes – “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were raisins and nuts we’d all be eating Waldorf salads.”

“Wimpy and inadequate” is the apt description of United States action so far, which only looks good under Obama compared to the eight years of Bush, but the best we can do? Hardly. Not even close.

We need a Winston Churchill on this issue, and we needed him yesterday.

Expecting anyone else but President Obama to fill those shoes ignores who he is and where we currently are on the timeline.

It’s time for greatness and historic achievements. Doing the best under the circumstances no longer cuts it.

BREAKING NEWS: CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD JUST RELEASED BLOCKBUSTER GREENHOUSE GAS REPORT OF STATE’S WORST POLLUTERS AND GLOBAL WARMERS
TORRANCE EXXON REFINERY RANKS #6 IN CALIFORNIA, EL SEGUNDO CHEVRON REFINERY IS #4

Click on the breaking news above and you’ll finally get to see the greenhouse gas numbers on our two local climate changing refineries that I’ve been demanding for a year now.  The CARB released them about an hour ago, too early for the morning papers, but not to early for your Creative Greenius.

I’ve been a little busy the past few months and I’ve fallen behind in covering some of the bigger environmental news stories locally here in my own backyard, but today we’re going to play catchup, big time -   

Councilman Furey pledging his allegiance to fossil fuels, global warming and more CO2

Let’s start with the $80,000 legal bribe Torrance City Councilman, Pat Furey, was so proud of getting from his friends at the world’s most unethical oil company, you know… the one currently melting the ice caps, glaciers and overheating our planet’s atmosphere while lying, scamming and covering up their deadly actions.  Yeah, that’s right -  good old #6 on the state list of greenhouse gas emitters the Torrance refinery owned by EXXON!

It happened on October 20 and I was there in-person, sitting in the front row with Torrance Democratic Club President, Rick Wagner, when Furey practically soiled himself in his seat, so enthusiastic and praise-filled was his shameless ballwashing of Exxon as our great neighbor who contributes to the health and well-being of our community. So shameless was Fossil Furey that he extolled the value of having Exxon around for our kids.

Yes, the same kids whose future Furey just sold down the river for a new library in his district.  Furey will tell you his whole career has been all about helping kids.  Too bad his actions enabling Exxon to destroy the futures of those very same children wipes out the value of that resume.

The Greenius says the children of the South Bay and all of California should hold this fluffer for Exxon personally responsible for the hell and high water that’s coming their way.  Just as they should hold every one of Furey’s fellow failed public servants libel since they all voted unanimously to have the citizens of Torrance bend over for this $80,000 payoff.  Their inexcusable ignorance harms us all.

And if you think that’s too tough and too harsh then you don’t know Exxon’s record of evil like I do.  But you should.  Just read this:

Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby groups that have published ‘misleading and inaccurate information’ about climate change

Even self-professed “Environmental Champion,” Cliff Numark, who looked so embarrassed and ashamed of himself I thought he was going to crawl under his chair, voted “YES” to praise Exxon and sell my city’s soul for cash.  But shamed though he might have been, Champion Cliff, couldn’t find the cajones to cast a “no” vote.  Not exactly a profile in courage, was it, Cliff?

$80,000 in exchange for pumping 2,852,374 tons of greenhouse gas into the air all our kids breathe while we’re already in the danger zone for global warming?  Damn, these politicians sell our kids out for peanuts, don’t they?

Here’s the brilliant job of reporting our Living Dead Zombie newspaper, the Daily Breeze, did on this news:

EXXON MOBIL DONATION:

ExxonMobil Torrance, CA

An unidentified refinery process unit was shut down Aug 25.
No restart estimate.

It’s obvious to this Creative Greenius that Exxon is not just one of the single biggest obstacles to stopping Global Warming and one of the biggest polluting companies on the face of this earth – it’s obvious that they flat out own the government here in ToxicTown Torrance.  They own them and they control their votes and they do it by paying them for it.  As Woodward and Bernstein taught me while I was still in high school – Follow the Money.

Maybe Exxon money is the reason there wasn’t a single elected official or city worker in Torrance who would tell the city’s citizens how much CO2 that Exxon refinery was pumping into our atmosphere for the past two years.  But now we know, because the Air Resources Board finally released the number we never would have gotten if it was up to the people who take checks from Exxon to pay the bills.

“Oh, Greenius, you’re just being mean and too harsh!” you might be saying.  “Maybe the Mayor and the City Council aren’t evil and sellouts, maybe they’re just too ignorant to understand what they’re voting on,” you might remind me. “They’re not criminals, they’re just clueless,” might be your rallying cry on their behalf.

You might be right.

Maybe that’s why this same group of representatives also voted unanimously on October 20 to endorse and support the 350 ppm target for CO2 at the very same Council meeting mere minutes after falling all over themselves to genuflect in front of their oil company masters.  Perhaps they don’t understand that we can’t reach 350 with that fossil fuel Exxon Mobil refinery doing what they do in our town.

It doesn’t matter whether they understand or not.  They’ve made commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and to get to 350 and they will be held to those commitments whether they grok it or they don’t.  They won’t have a choice from a responsibility standpoint and they don’t have a choice scientifically either.

Don’t forget – I too have made a commitment and I take my commitments a lot more seriously then people who will sell their votes for cash.  I’m committed to getting rid of that Exxon Mobil refinery by my 60th birthday on September 18, 2017. I’ve said so publicly and I understand exactly what I’m talking about.  Those 750 acres are now slated to become a large scale solar powered energy plant.

Maybe the incompetent representatives and staff here in Torrance whose salaries my tax dollars pay for don’t have a clue what’s coming next for Exxon and their future around these parts, but I do.

For months now I’ve tried to work with King George Topou V and the rest of the Royal Family of Tonga in an attempt to inform them about the risks their kingdom faces from climate change and to get them to act on behalf of their people.  It’s been a frustrating, nonproductive process full of long delays and zero sense of urgency on the part of the King, the Queen and assorted princesses and wanna-be princesses.

Along the way, one thing has become blindingly obvious.  Neither the King, or any other member of the royal family, gives a shit about what happens to their people – whether it’s from climate change, the sinking of unseaworthy ferry boats owned by the government, or from earthquakes or tsunamis.

 

Hidden behind a rubbish dump on the northern side of Nuku'alofa you will find a slum built on a filled-in swamp; showing the real poor side of Tonga...

If you think I’m being too tough on somebody else’s scared culture, then I think you should try being one of the 40% of Tongan’s who live below the poverty level with diminishing prospects of a decent life for yourself and your children, while the Tongan royal family lives high off the hog and makes its money the old fashioned way – by holding their hands out and demanding it in exchange for jack squat.

For the people of Tonga, the best thing they can hope for is to take their future into their own hands and toss the royals out on their asses – even before they are forced to give up power next year.

There’s no reason in the world you should delay the democracy that is long overdue you.  Because the longer you wait, the longer it’s going to take you to start cutting Tonga’s carbon footprint – which you should have started doing already.  That’s step one in learning to save yourselves.

You’re going to need to start by eliminating your use of diesel generators and switching to more carbon free sources of energy.  You needed a solar Tonga project like yesterday.

And you’re going to have to start preparing for the sea level rise that is already baked into your nation’s future. So you might as well get started today.

Frankly, I doubt the delusional royal family will even notice what’s happening.

After all, your  60 year old, still-in-the-closet king (not that there’s anything wrong with that) spends almost all his time dressing up in silly military costumes, playing with remote control toys, sporting his Dr. Evil style monocle, wearing his sword and driving his English taxi – when he’s not pretending to be Scottish and spending months at a time playing war games and sucking up cash wherever he goes.

Hell of a role model, King.  Way to rule.

You’ve done almost as well as your dad did when he got suckered out of millions by that low level employee of the Bank of America who he named the Royal Court Jester before turning over all the profits your nation made by selling Tongan citizenships to the the Chinese before the turnover of Hong Kong.  Ahhhh, the good old days.

With President Obama and the rest of the leaders of the world’s biggest polluting nations kicking the ball down the field on climate change and effectively pulling the rug out from under all of us who have been targeting the Copenhagen climate talks as the moment we must seize, our response must recognize the obvious.

Despite the historic gains we’ve made building the 350 movement across the planet in the past year, we have not captured the hearts and minds of the general public or the media.

We have the science and the scientists on our side, we have built a mighty coalition of activists, businesses, churches, schools and enlightened government representatives – but in the Age of Stupid, where cats who love cheeseburgers rule the Internet, and where polling both in the United States and in the United Kingdom show declining numbers of adults believe global warming is either man-made or a real threat, the sense of urgency is far greater for learning who the next winner of American Idol is than for switching to a new clean, green, carbon free economy.  Go figure.

Scientists have been telling us for a couple of years now how scared they were about the gap between what they were discovering and reporting and what the public was understanding, accepting and believing.  And the worse things have gotten in terms of the discoveries and the reports, ironically the wider the gap between reality and what the average man and woman on the street is grokking.

One thing has become abundantly clear to me through the work I’ve been doing as a community organizer on behalf of 350.org here in Southern California – we need a swift and massive public education campaign that builds rapid awareness, interest, appeal and action on behalf of our brand.

And the way we need to market and sell that brand is the same way successful politicians like Barack Obama sell themselves, the same way Guitar Hero, Viagra, iPods, Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Las Vegas make their brands impossible to ignore powerhouses.

Yeah, that’s right, we have a brand and it’s the only brand that can satisfy the greatest urges and needs mankind has:  survival, continued propagation of our species and quality of life.  That’s a damn fine “point of difference” as we call it in the marketing world.

So instead of spending so much time trying to earn political support from politicians and governments I think we need to turn our focus to recruiting the best marketing, sales and creative pros – many of whom are currently on the street, jobless, downsized due to cutbacks in consumer spending.

We need to employ these pros to use the same tools and tactics that have consumers living in fear of bad breath, body odor, dandruff, or being ridiculed for buying the wrong brand of computer, car or cell phone.

Policy takes forever, but markets, brands, trends and popular culture all turn on a dime – especially in the Internet era.  New stars come out of nowhere and rocket to the top in months while legends and classics fall out of favor and off the radar screen just as quickly.

We need a worldwide, integrated marketing campaign to build sweeping awareness, interest and to drive climate change consumers to rapid action. And that campaign starts by filling that gap between what scientists know is happening right now and what the public is hearing and understanding.

We can’t wait for the media or anyone else to package and deliver this news and information for us, we need to put together our own teams of the best and brightest communicators on the scene today and we need to use the same tactics, the same language and leverage the same equity in the minds of consumers as the brands that currently fill their heads with slogans, positioning lines and reasons for believing.

Don’t get me wrong – we still need to continue all our grassroots efforts, but we need to do more than that.  We need to reach and teach the masses.  And the way we do that is to tell and then to sell.

And when it comes to selling the need to act and the solutions we need to act with, we all need to remember ABC –

A = Always

B = Be

C= Closing.

But don’t take my word for it:

10,000 Dancers for the Climate with music by U2.

How did this happen?  Read about it here.

Something big is happening all around the world.

Are you ready to be part of some more history making on the beach?

The clock is ticking…

TCKTCKTCK

Can you hear it?

Can you feel it?

Are YOU ready to dance?

Creative Greenius, Joe Galliani, with his free LED lights from the South Bay Environmental Services Center Holiday Light Exchange

For the third consecutive year I was able to take advantage of the Holiday Light Exchange offered by my great friends at the South Bay Environmental Services Center.  And they’ve still got plenty of these high quality GE mini white LEDs as well as the GE multi-colored LED sets available.  But they always run out some time in November so you better move quick.

It was the holiday Light Exchange in 2007 that first connected me with the SBESC and I’ve been a volunteer with them ever since.  In fact, this year I have well over 250 volunteer hours served with the Environmental Services Center and I’m excited about being honored at next week’s Volunteer Appreciation Dinner.

I’m also excited about all the new volunteers who have joined our ranks and hope that more of you will get out there on the front lines of teaching the public about energy efficiency, renewable energy, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and all the other things, individuals and businesses can do to help make a difference in the fight against global warming and climate change.  Click here to learn more about volunteering with the SBESC.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Holiday Light Exchange on their fabulous flier:

Here’s what was on my mind this morning at 11:30 am when I spoke with Tracy Young of CNN’s Headline News, Charter Local Edition.

This is the sneak preview of that interview.  Photos and video clips from our historic October 24 Climate Action in Manhattan Beach will be added in post production.  The interview will air multiple times starting on November 30 and running through December 6 – the day before the Copenhagen climate talks begin.

In one of the Creative Greenius’ most highly read posts, written on July 29 of this year, I said there was no difference between today’s global warming deniers and the heads of the tobacco industry a few years back.

Yesterday my position was correctly stated by Rep. Jay Inslee a democrat from the great Pacific Northwest state of Washington who tore the authors of SuperWeakEconomics a new one for all their lies and hack writing in their new, already discredited book.

Inslee told it exactly like it is when he stated for the Congressional record that the book’s clueless authors practiced “absolute deception” in their blatant and amateurish lies about climate scientist Ken Caldeira. Inslee slammed the writers of the book as propagandists who were trying to deceive the American public on global warming.

It all went down yesterday during a hearing of the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming investigating the criminally forged letters sent on behalf of the coal industry opposing climate legislation.  The conman from the coal industry group tried to blame the whole thing on a rouge temp in the office.  Why that perjurer wasn’t lead out of the US Congress building in handcuffs is a mystery.

Looks like the Greenius has been too mellow and nice in what I’ve previously written and said about the coal industry mercenaries and the bastards who are selling out your children and our civilization’s future just to line their pockets and satisfy the greed that is the core of their being.  Same goes for their brothers in the oil and gasoline industries.

Guess I’m going to have to get tougher still.

No problem.