Mailbag: ‘Green’ definition needs clarity

‘Green’ definition needs clarity

For too long now you have been misleading some of your readers who can’t see through the fallacy that solar panels alone make you “green.” No sincere, educated person would classify someone powering their inefficient, super-sized home with 170 panels as “green.” On the contrary. Green is much deeper and holistic than that. By suggesting that solar panels alone make you green is incredibly naive and borders on greenwashing. Please give us a little more depth and practice responsible journalism by giving us a more accurate headline (e.g., Solar panels vs. Ocean Views) and maybe educate the public in the process. You should avoid indicating something is green unless some authority such as Energy Star, the United States Green Building Council, both of which can certify homes as “green” for example, have certified that something as green. Otherwise you are greenwashing and doing a disservice to the Pilot reading public. Measurable standards for green have been established to avoid exactly the typed of misinformation you are providing as to what green is.

Jeff Stevens

Newport Beach

On Saturday night my wife, Karen, swooned and collapsed at the Sawdust. Immediately, concerned people gathered. 911 was called in momentarily an EMT crew arrived, gathered her up and whisked her over to Mission Hospital Laguna Beach ER where she was quickly seen to, treated and released after determining a non-life threatening cause of her episode.

I need to thank all the people at Sawdust, especially the anonymous Good Samaritan who draped my wife in a soft warm blanket. The EMT crew that seemed to materialize through horrendous traffic and attended to Karen thoughtfully and quickly. The doctors and ER nursing staff were wonderful. Thank all of you including the lady at CVS pharmacy on Sunday morning for your thoughtful deeds and words. Karen is back to herself again.

Matt Smith

Laguna Beach

As a follow-up to my July 9 letter to the editor “Will faith override health directives?” I am please to report that the answer to that question is, “No.”

I attended this week’s Mission Hospital Laguna Beach Neighbor Forum and was assured that Do Not Resuscitate and California Advance Health Care Directives will be honored. What a thankful relief.

Niko Theris

Laguna Beach

Contract city governments are dangerous

It is clear that a [Bell] City Council orchestrated a conspiracy in collusion to change the form of government from a general law city to a charter city in 2005. In a general law city, the state is the watchdog, whereas in a charter city only the council is a watchdog, allowing city government to rob the treasury and pension fund.

They [Bell City Council members] should be prosecuted for this fraud and their salaries and pensions should be refunded to the city. Everybody complicit in this collusion should be put in jail for perpetrating a felony. Hopefully the Attorney General’s office in California will recognize and act appropriately.

Karl Von Muff

Laguna Woods

Columnist’s use of ‘bully pulpit’ rankles

“Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author’s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” SOURCE: Wikipedia

I applaud the editorial staff for publishing a reminder column about urban runoff pollution, probably thought it a community service, a forum for public education [Verde Laguna: “‘The ocean begins at your front door’” by Gustavo Grad, Aug. 13, Coastline Pilot]. Unfortunately, Mr. Grad’s column is nothing more than a boilerplate, generic summation probably achieved via high school level cut and paste from the web. There is not one new thing, it’s all re-treads and re-wording of existing information you can find everywhere, notably posted by our Laguna Beach Water Quality Department: https://www.lagunabeachcity.net/about/env.asp

There isn’t one original thought or word in any of his columns I’ve perused recently, ooops, I mean advertisements for his consulting business. Being derivative is one thing, not citing your resources is objectionable. The parent LA Times has national prestige that is being abused and by trustingly accepting volunteer columns without vetting or researching them it is being duped. Posting his columns equals an endorsement or referral, adding to his credibility portfolio.

He not only plagiarized a key conceptual phrase, “The ocean begins at your front door,” he also failed to acknowledge that all of the suggestions he made are core elements of Low Impact Development (LID), which has a minimum eight-year history—nor did he inform readers that they have been Best Management Practices (BMPs) for the past 12 years I’ve been in the field. By failing to identify LID and BMPs or Internet hyperlinks to them, he falsely portrayed himself to be the originator, the inventor of the phrase AND the strategies in his column, a lie of omission. Simply citing these two constructs would lead many to further research the topic and educate themselves online if he’d only provided them. And why didn’t he include our own City website so that residents could view what’s being mandated locally?

He certainly found space to bolster his argument with tons of statistics, why did he intentionally leave out 99% of where he got this information or where it could be found, granted tossing the Natural Resources Defense Council and UC Santa Barbara a cookie near the conclusion? In fact, if he were capable of honesty, he would have noted that EVERY NGO, city, county and water district in urbanized regions now use that same phrase and have the same types of runoff strategies posted at their websites since about 2000, have fliers with that phrase Mr. Grad stole as a title and concluding sentence in the foyer of their respective offices.

GOOGLE the phrase if you don’t believe me. Maybe Mr. Grad should have acknowledged that he didn’t coin this mantra, maybe he did and thought no one would notice? One of the easiest, most basic steps when writing in this Internet age is to make sure someone else doesn’t have proprietary rights for a phrase, and if so directly request permission or give them accreditation by revealing the source. Here’s a hyperlink:

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=the+ocean+begins+at+your+front+door&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

One of the many challenges facing real eco-protectionists, many of us who slave uncompensated in the trenches, is the increasing number of capitalistic entrepreneurs who wrap themselves unethically in the evolving green flag movement for personal gain. As Mr. Grad is a professional in the field like myself, the amount of column space granted him this year is basically free advertising, making his articles self-serving business infomercials without disclaimers or caveats. If he didn’t know that this phrase has been around for a long time then he’s inept in his due diligence capability department.

That key coined phrase by the way is verbatim what the County has been placing on the front page of its fliers for over a decade (see attached flier), that many cities and water districts in the region have borrowed. Not to fluff up their resumés but as their public education mitigation commitment under their Cal/EPA approved NPDES stormwater permits since the late 1990s.

I am attaching the cover of the original County of Orange flier, a version of which we’ve been handing out at Clean Water Now! Coalition’s Cal Coastal Commission beach cleanups since 2001. Let the editors decide if they want to print this 10 year-old, highly circulated flier next to my response.

Being a professional consultant myself, I also find allowing him to publish innumerable disingenuous articles previously, the one in question the first of three this time around, is akin to drumming up business unfairly with your paper’s help. An occasional article or letter as a reminder is one thing—a bully pulpit, a thinly veiled marketing strategy is quite unjust. This much self-serving ink should be paid for as an ad.

Roger Bütow

Laguna Beach

[Roger Bütow is founder and executive director of the Clean Water Now! Coalition.]