Tag archives: energy

Living Like There Really is a Climate Crisis?
By Robert Bernstein   |   September 10, 2024

How can we use behavior science to persuade people to solve the Climate Crisis? I recently attended a UCSB Psychology talk on this subject. To me, facts and evidence should be enough. It takes a lot more than that for most people. It turns out that people who are most environmentally aware are often worse […]

Miracle Cars?
By Robert Bernstein   |   March 21, 2023

Soon after I was first elected to the Sierra Club board, a fourth-grade teacher invited me to speak to her class. I came prepared with a list of questions, rather than a speech. I asked the class to imagine a car that runs on an unlimited source of energy that never runs out. And to […]

Republicans, We Have a Problem
By Bob Hazard   |   November 8, 2022

Here at the Montecito Journal, we have long believed in offering a variety of views, letting each side have its space to speak. In light of the upcoming election, two of our longtime contributors have written in on what they think you should consider when heading to the ballot box this November 8. With Rinaldo […]

Bravo, Brutoco
By Montecito Journal   |   August 30, 2022

Bravo (yet again) to Rinaldo Brutoco’s August 11 column. He always comes up with the best adjectives when clashing up against “Big Power” greed: “Preposterous shibboleth” … Makes me laugh every time I look at it! In throwing big shade last week at the PG&E & Edison monopolies, he calls back to his group’s white […]

Positive Power Progress: The Middle East Fuel Commodity of the Future
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   August 16, 2022

The last two columns in this space revealed the ridiculousness of burning more natural gas as a way to combat climate change just because it is half the carbon of coal.  In case everyone isn’t already aware, the time for half measures is way gone! Greece, France, and other major areas of Europe are on […]

Politics and Morality Supreme Court Style
By Montecito Journal   |   July 5, 2022

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Dobbs opinion by the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices is the certainty that further assaults on our basic freedoms are coming. Not only on women’s reproductive rights, protected since 1973 under Roe v. Wade, but privileges and liberties Americans have long enjoyed, and encompassed in […]

Charging Ahead? Crashing the Grid!
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   June 21, 2022

Electric cars are gushing onto our streets from Tesla, and from Nissan, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and a half dozen other car manufacturers (450 different models globally!). Elon Musk succeeded beyond Detroit’s wildest dreams in convincing first the American public, and then the global marketplace, that driving an electric car was “cool.” Everyone wanted one, and […]

Economic Failures Created the Climate Crisis, but Economic Policy Can Fix It
By Robert Taylor   |   May 10, 2022

As a new resident of Montecito, I’m learning about issues and concerns in our community through reading the weekly Montecito Journal. Since the climate crisis is my major concern, I particularly appreciate articles by columnists Rinaldo Brutoco, Tom Farr, and Robert Bernstein, as well as frequent reports of news and opinions from local environmental groups. […]

Freedom Fuel in the USA and Abroad Severing the Umbilical Cord
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   May 3, 2022

On April 14, this column introduced the concept of “Freedom Fuel.” It outlined the potential unlocked by shifting from a planetary fuel system based on fossil fuels to a system based on the wide availability of hydrogen created by electrolyzing water with renewable energy (so called “Green Hydrogen”) at prices below fossil fuel. As that […]

Freedom Fuel No “Planet B”
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   April 19, 2022

1,000,000,000 = 1 billion Euros ($110 billion in U.S. dollars) per day. That’s what Europe sends to Russia in cash every single day. At that rate Russia can finance a war for a very long time. At that rate, Russia can commit unlimited atrocities. And, even though some are afraid to call what Russia is […]

Rock, Peace, and the Nature of Bears
By Montecito Journal   |   March 15, 2022

Carlos, The Bear, set his Fender Telecaster guitar on its stand, sat back in his bean bag chair, crossed his arms, and began humming a tune. His mind was remembering his early days. He was a smallish bear, nothing like the one he saw on CNN earlier that day, Hank the Tank. No, Carlos was […]

Clean Coalition: Finding Creative Solutions to Renewables-Driven Energy Resilience
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 10, 2022

Last summer, just a couple of months before Montecito Journal’s 2nd annual The Giving List book was published, Clean Coalition’s work to stage a Community Microgrid in Montecito – a first step toward establishing renewables-driven energy resilience for the vulnerable area – was still largely in the planning stage. The goal to establish individual Solar […]

Green is Good! Healing the Biosphere One Step at a Time
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   February 8, 2022

Last week this column skewered the plaintive cry of the character Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street when he propounded that “Greed is good.” In doing so we wrapped up the article by quoting one of the most famous and powerful of all capitalists, Chairman and CEO Larry Fink of BlackRock. The firm Fink […]

“Jabberwocky” PG&E and Edison are at it again!
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   January 25, 2022

Investor-Owned Utilities (“Utilities”) are plotting to kill California’s solar program. Apparently, avarice, and the ability to get away with causing 85 percent of area lost in recent forest fires in California, are not enough, and they are now coming up with ways to dramatically reduce all new solar installations in California. Can you believe that […]

Climate Crisis as Market Failure?
By Robert Bernstein   |   November 16, 2021

As I write this, countries from around the world are convening in Glasgow for COP26 to solve the climate crisis. It is 26 because for 26 years these meetings have been going on and the threat keeps getting worse. I first began talking about the climate crisis in 1981 when it was called Global Warming […]

Hydrogen: The Simple Solution Unpacking the Color Codes for Our Future Fuel
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   May 13, 2021

Brown Hydrogen, Grey Hydrogen, Blue Hydrogen, Green Hydrogen. Who knew hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe (76 percent of all molecules in the universe are hydrogen), came in so many colors! Actually, it doesn’t. Those color references relate to how hydrogen (“H2”) is made. If the source of electricity for electrolyzing H2 from […]

Gen X’ers NEXT Tech: Windows That Power Buildings
By Joanne A Calitri   |   July 2, 2020

Our town’s innovative business, Next Energy Technologies Inc. (NEXT), a solar technology company with the motto “Windows Power Buildings” is co-founded by Gen-X’ers Corey Hoven PhD, Chief Technology Officer, from Montana and Daniel Emmett CEO from Carpinteria and a Cate School graduate. It was Corey’s research and studies in Materials Science, organic photovoltaics, with a […]

It Takes a Village to Save a Village
By Gwyn Lurie   |   April 23, 2020

The world is going LOCAL. Or at least it should be. Every day we have more proof that food, information, energy infrastructure, and leadership have the most integrity and most power to do good when they have the least distance to travel. When it’s locally sourced. Distance dissipates. It is a fact of life. How […]

Earth Day 50
By Hal Conklin   |   April 23, 2020

Looking Back / Looking Forward Santa Barbara is often referred to as the “birthplace of the Environmental Movement.” It is true that back on April 22, 1970, Santa Barbara had become a key catalyst for the first Earth Day, having galvanized public outrage a year earlier when it experienced the worst oil spill in U.S. […]

Transmission Woes on Central Coast
By Rinaldo Brutoco   |   March 26, 2020

Southern Santa Barbara County is literally at the end of the line in terms of the electrical transmission grid. Sixty-six percent of our power is carried through a single pair of high voltage transmission lines owned by Southern California Edison (Edison). They sit in the back of the foothills that ring our county and bring […]