Gary Allison led our inspiration with a focus on compassion, and what we can do to improve our compassion.
We then had 2 Red badge bios:
Kirsten Bridges
Lived in the bay area her entire life save for 4 years in Chico State. She and her husband Ivor have been married for 31 years. She has a daughter who attended Texas A&M and who is an electrical applications engineer. Kirsten was an insurance underwriter at Allstate. She is interested in reading, Mah Jongg, bird watching, and is learning Ukulele. Kirsten’s father was involved in Rotary, and she really appreciated the camaraderie that the showed her father especially in his later years when he had Alzheimer’s.
Lydia Norcia
Lydia was originally from New England but didn’t like the weather out there and moved to Saratoga in the ‘70s. Her parents were originally from Italy. She grew up in a big Italian family with a rich tradition of wonderful Italian cooking. Her passions are gardening, cooking, baking, bird watching, Mah Jongg, and community service.
Rod Diridon Sr. then gave a stirring presentation on climate change. He introduced the topic by letting us know that all the data he was presenting was double peer reviewed, and that it was factual. He then led into the topic showing the timeline for the past 5 major extinction events that we know of, and that there will be a 6th unless we change the way we are operating to reduce our impacts on the climate. He said our actions today can reduce the future impact. He went through some of the evidence that shows the current greenhouse effect is human caused (by increasing CO2 emissions), and that this is the overwhelming scientific consensus (99.9% of scientists). Transportation and electricity generation accounts for around 60% of these CO2 emissions, and that’s a major area for us to improve. He cited studies which show that if we don’t limit emissions in the next 12 years, then we may pass a point of no return. The good news is that solutions exist already and he presented some concrete steps: 1. Transform the power grid 2. Electrify everything 3. Electrify mass transit. What can you do – The Rotary club of San Jose has created the Rotary Action Committee and we could create a similar committee in our club. You can be a climate change ambassador: talk to your family, friends, and neighbors, insert climate change concern into daily conversations, volunteer to speak to your favorite community groups, buy/lease an electric car, install solar panels.
Chris Potter also pointed out that Rotary has an international group focused on climate action, and Marty tapped him to give a future presentation to the group on this topic and how we can all get involved.
Rod ended by challenging us all to be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye when they one day ask us what we did to stop climate change, and to be able to say, “We did all that we could.”
Click here to view the slides from todays meeting.
Click here to view the speaker slides from todays meeting.