Like most of California, Santa Barbara is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. As our population has grown over the past few decades, our housing stock has stayed relatively flat – leading to exponentially rising prices to rent an apartment or buy a home. Partly this is by design, as majority bias in […]
WATCH: Video of Global Citizens Club May 2019 Event “Santa Barbara Transitions to Transportation Integration”
Please enjoy this video recording of the May 22, 2019 GCC Public event “Santa Barbara Transitions to Transportation Integration” focusing on Santa Barbara’s transportation future. Speakers: Robin O’Hara, Mark Bradley, Ernesto Paredes, and Gregg Hart. Panel Moderated by Rinaldo Brutoco. Location: Belmond El Encanto Hotel, Santa Barbara.
Global Citizens Club Meeting: Santa Barbara’s Transportation Future
We were delighted by the response to our May 22nd Global Citizens Club meeting focusing on Santa Barbara’s Transportation Future. With attendance reaching almost 100 people, it clearly demonstrated the historically vigorous community interest in finding transportation solutions that will work well for everyone and strategies for investing in new modes to quickly transition to […]
Some Good News on the Fracking Front
By Robert Perry For all of us following the onslaught of oil and gas proposals and attempts by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to open every acre of federal land in California to fracking, the sheer volume of battles can be daunting. I attended and spoke at the BLM public meeting at SBCC on […]
Using Today’s Mass Transit System: A Case Study
By Robert Perry and Kristy Jansen In order to gain first-hand experience of our local transit system in Santa Barbara, Robert Perry (the Academy’s Director of Energy Research), and Kristy Jansen, (the Academy’s Chief of Staff and Media Producer) resolved to only use mass transit at least one day a week during the month of […]
Transitioning from Absolute Autonomy to a Multi-Modal World
Our lifetimes are marked by rites of passage, many of which revolve around personal autonomy and agency. As a baby, we crawl and then learn to walk. Later, we are given a tricycle and then a bicycle. Who doesn’t recall getting their first bicycle? In one fell stroke, a child’s range of exploration is expanded […]
Honoring Earth Day 2019 with a Renewed Commitment to Finding Solutions
Visit the World Business Academy Booth at the Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival April 27 & 28 at Alameda Park. The world has problems, and Santa Barbara County is no exception. The World Business Academy’s mission is to encourage businesses to create innovative solutions both locally and globally to the planet’s pressing environmental challenges. […]
Methane: One More Reason for the Green New Deal
I think we all remember the horrific tragedy of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an event brought closer to home through media and online resources showing real-time videos and estimates of the massive oil plume that ultimately spewed ~4.9 billion barrels (210 million gallons) of oil over a five-month period, affecting 68,000 square miles […]
Greening Our Infrastructure: Transportation
We are now on the precipice of systemic change to our planetary climate system… The near-unanimous consensus at last year’s IPCC 1.5 conference, combined with an initial wave of climate change impacts in the form of stronger hurricanes, more violent storms/floods and longer drought, demands a holistic transition of all economic sectors to a carbon-free […]
Global Citizens Club Meeting on Climate Change Grassroots Action Draws a Huge Crowd!
The huge response to our February 19th Global Citizens Club (GCC) meeting was extremely gratifying, with over 200 people from the community turning out to learn more about effectively fighting climate change from a diverse panel of experts and activists. Highlights of the meeting hosted at the El Encanto included a moving statement from local […]
PG&E’s Bankruptcy Filing: An Opportunity for Energy Democratization
By Robert Perry, Director of Energy Research Everyone is buzzing about the implications of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) declaring bankruptcy. When the news broke last week, PG&E’s stock fell 52%, only to bounce back by 75% when California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection determined that private electrical equipment was responsible for starting the […]
2019: The Year of Climate Mobilization
By Robert Perry, Director of Energy Research “For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” – Treebeard, from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. For many, 2018’s seemingly endless succession of hurricanes, wildfires, and torrential storms, combined […]