Going to the Matt

President and CEO of Global Green USA, the U.S. affiliate of Green Cross International.

When founding Green Cross International, Mikhail Gorbachev presented a challenge: We must foster a value shift that reconnects humankind to the environment. Planet Earth would do just fine without humans, but we must ensure the health of the planet in order to ensure humanity's continued survival.

All our work includes a focus on communities, whether it is helping get a health clinic for a destitute community that rests in the shadow of a nerve gas warehouse in Russia or supporting efforts to build cisterns in a village in the arid region of Bolivia. Firsthand knowledge and on-the-ground experience are used to strengthen our broader education and advocacy initiatives, like our push in the U.S. Congress to get continued funding to destroy Russian chemical weapons or our global water treaty campaign.

I came in touch with the founder of Global Green USA, Diane Meyer Simon, in early 1994. I had previously run political campaigns, and was then in grad school at the University of Southern California getting my master's in public administration and working full-time running a small environmental group. Diane, a former political staffer, and I hit it off, and we talked about me coming to work with her. The timing wasn't right, but six months later I got a call from Diane asking me to come set up Gorbachev's trip to launch Global Green in California and establish the organization. It's been an incredible journey ever since, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Diane for believing in me.

I have about 1,000 that I just winnowed down from 1,200 this past week by deleting and filing. It is a big challenge to keep deleting emails that don't need to be saved and responding to all the emails I get daily. I'm often up late at night sending emails to colleagues in Europe, getting into exchanges with them at the beginning of their day (midnight in L.A. is 9 a.m. in Geneva or Paris).

I was born in Sonora, Calif., raised in Modesto, Calif., and have lived in Santa Monica, Calif., for 12 years now.

I serve on the Santa Monica environmental task force as part of my commitment to my community and a way to experience policy making at the community level firsthand. We're doing a lot of great things here through the City of Santa Monica's sustainable city program. One of my pet peeves on the task force has been declining recycling rates. I was once walking in our alley and saw a neighbor -- someone I did not know, a common occurrence living in an apartment/condo-heavy neighborhood -- drop an unread Sunday Los Angeles Times in the trash can when a recycling can was right next to him. When I told him, he apologized and said he couldn't reach the paper now. I feel like we should task Boy Scouts to patrol trash cans for newspapers, cans, and bottles, and perhaps "write a ticket" for those that have recyclables in their trash. As a kid I remember the Boy Scouts were the organizers of newspaper recycling, so perhaps they'd accept this new task!

People like Ray Anderson and Paul Hawken are great inspirations; E.O. Wilson too.

We need both. In the U.S., we are in need of an awakening. The environmental movement needs to reach out to organizations and community leaders to find ways to make the issue and challenge of climate change relevant to people (and improve media coverage of the issue). If we don't, we will fail to build the political will necessary for action. Part of making climate change relevant is to make sure PTA presidents, affordable-housing developers, and other community advocates all see how it can impact their lives, but also how solutions can benefit them and their work. Let's make climate solutions work for everyone, not just utilities and large polluters.

For work, it's plane travel, of course. Personally, it's takeout food. Thankfully, my wife and I have cut back a lot on dinner takeout since we've had our son.

I thumbed through the laughable State of Fear by Crichton, and am reading Tale of Two Cities, which somehow I got away with never reading in school. Also on my desk: Gary Erickson's Raising the Bar and David Orr's latest book, The Last Refuge.

Tough to choose ... on a specific issue, it would be creating binding federal greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets in the U.S. that get us toward the 70 percent in reductions scientists estimate we need to avoid climate catastrophe.

INXS, maybe Simple Minds when I was 18. Now, the Beastie Boys are loving the top spot and since my son became a classical music aficionado, Mozart has become oft-listened-to as well.

I just watched The Last Wave, directed by Peter Weir. It was pretty amazing.

My wife and son.

Sign our Pledge of Allegiance to American Energy Independence, and make a donation to Global Green if you can. Ask your city council and school board to adopt a green building policy for future construction projects. And sign our international water treaty petition.