Young are challenged to save the oceans
Oblivious to nearby hobnobbing cocktail swiggers, blobs of jellyfish bobbed around in their tanks at the California Academy of Sciences on Tuesday night, Sept. 11. The Sustainable Oceans Alliance was hosting its Ocean Solutions Gala, an affiliate event of this week’s Global Climate Action Summit. There was nary a jellyfish crying out to escape confinement. (That’s probably because they don’t talk.) And as environmentalists know, freedom comes with peril: pollutants, plastics, rising temperatures. And this is the reason for the alliance, and for the event.
The alliance “advances startups, social entrepreneurs and youth-centered initiatives to develop solutions for the greatest challenges facing the ocean through its Leadership and Accelerator Programs,” said the program. It was founded by Daniela Fernandez, a 24-year-old environmental wonder woman who dreamed up the idea “to inspire young people and to fund solutions for oceans” five years ago, when she was a student at Georgetown University. Fernandez said she’d be participating in events and making multiple speeches every day of the conference.
The alliance provides coaching and training for young people with specific ideas and inventions related to the oceanic environment. Before this evening’s event, the alliance had received 100 applications from all over the world and selected five projects for an eight-week accelerator program in Silicon Valley, which was just completed.
Representatives of each of those programs, innovators looking for investments, were at the dinner, which was also attended by venture capitalists, private citizens, heads of other environmental companies ... anyone who might decide to lend support. “We want to take advantage of this week,” said Jose Humberto Ramirez Leyva, whose Mexican startup ETAC is aimed at detecting and cleaning up oil spills, “while the eyes of the world are on San Francisco.”
At a reception before dinner, the companies’ founders displayed their innovations; they made pitches to the audience between the salad and main courses. SafetyNet Technologies was about fishermen using light to attract desired fish and repel undesired fish, thereby eliminating waste; CalWave was about harnessing wave power; Sustainability Cloud was about making waste marketable; and Loliware was about replacing plastic straws with ones made of seaweed.
Hanging around near those jellyfish before dinner, Steve Hams of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Harold Hedelman of Business Climate Leaders said they had both retired from business, are focused on environmental action and were planning to spend much of the week at summit-affiliated events. Believers like them have been especially motivated in the past year and a half. “A lot of it catalyzed,” said Hams, “after the election . ... People were coming out of the woodwork.”
Fernandez kept emphasizing that this call to action is directed at the young. There weren’t many gray heads at the event, but as mine was among them, when I took off my plastic badge at the end of the evening, I felt embarrassed to be part of the generation that fell down on the job.
Ken Maley found this timely sticker affixed to a lamppost: It was round with a fried egg-like shape in the center with the words “Fight Climate Change” around the top, “Or Die Frying” on the bottom.
And Anthony Barcellos suggests that the Ocean Cleanup vessel, launched in Alameda a few days ago on its way to the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean, be sponsored by iRobot, which makes Roomba cleaning devices. I’m wondering whether the ship could be supplanted by a seagoing Roomba. Man-about-Muni Ted Weinstein is moved by the way the city’s public transit system is bringing people together. He emailed from the J-Church, aboard which he wrote, “The entire front section of the new-model train is having an enthusiastic group discussion about how ridiculously uncomfortable the new benches are. They are digging into everyone’s back, tall or short, thin or heavier. ‘No human being sat in these seats for more than 50 seconds before signing off on these trains,’ someone just said.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I’ve asked you this before. Do you want to stay and play with the other doggies or go home? It’s your decision.” Man to dog, overheard in Lafayette Park by Jules Older
Giants announcer Renel BrooksMoon’s 60th birthday party, at Epic Steak on Saturday, Sept. 8, was attended by Mayor London Breed, Board of Supervisors President Malia Cohen, Port Commission President Kimberly Brandon, former Mayor Willie Brown, the Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani, Giants Enterprises’ Stephen Revetria and more more more. There were video tributes from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and all the Giants. The cake had five tiers, which I’m hoping — in this baseball season particularly — made for good wishing.