Carl Mears has been studying the weather for years. Now he’s trying to do something about it.

Carl Mears will be the featured speaker at a community gathering June 30 at 5:30 pm at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Santa Rosa.  His topic:  “What’s really going on with the Climate? A scientists’ perspective.”

For some, the phrase "climate change" has supplanted "global warming" as this issue is discussed. Mears says he understands the scientific reasoning behind that, but dislikes the political connotations.

Offshore oil drilling has never been embraced here on California’s north coast, but recent events in the Gulf Coast have bolstered that view elsewhere. Hands Across the Sand, a coordinated series of demonstrations across the country, including one near Bodega Bay, will try to reinforce those changing attitudes on June 26th.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s Marine Sanctuary Expansion Bill (HR 223) and its identical Senate counterpart would build on existing protections and expand them to cover the entire Marin and Sonoma coastlines. Tom Roth, the congresswoman’s senior policy aide, offers details.

But Roth also notes that the partisan political climate in Washington has become increasingly hostile toward anything that sets out to restrict American oil development.

Regardless of what happens to Woolsey’s bill, Coastwalk Executive Director Una Glass points out that there is another, statewide, obstacle to coastal oil drilling, one that is already in place, even if it is not widely known.

Near the mouth of the Mississippi River, oil soaked pelicans, one-by one, are getting cleaned up, fed, and returned to the wild. A volunteer from Sonoma County explains the process.

As Executive Director of the Sonoma County Bird Rescue Center, Doris Duncan (seen below in the process of hosing down an oily pelican in Louisiana) has considerable experience working with large seabirds. She says the same is true of everyone at the cleaning facility that was hastily erected at the historic site of Fort Jackson.

The majority of the rescued birds are large brown pelicans, such as those seen in this holding pen. Duncan says they are fed and protected while awaiting their turn to be cleaned.

Capitalism doesn’t have to be an economic system that devours raw materials with massive waste. An advocate of a variant termed “Natural Capitalism” contends it can deliver greater prosperity through increased efficiency and careful stewardship of natural and human resources.

Lovins argues that human productivity could learn a lot from Nature, which is powered almost exclusively by the sun, and leaves no waste that isn’t fuel for some other natural process.

Modern day free marketers often invoke Adam Smith and his “invisible hand” as the guiding principle behind the policies they advocate, including globalism and free trade. But Lovins counters that doing so is a distorted misreading of what Smith actually said.

Reducing or greatly eliminating the enormous amount of waste that is built  into our economy is not enough, but itself, to ensure long-term prosperity. But Lovins says it would be a good start.

Hunter Lovins will be among the speakers at the Solar Energy and Efficiency Fair in Santa Rosa’s Finley Park June 19,from 11am to 5pm. You can get more detailed event information here.