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George Peridas's Blog

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Bio:

It has been twelve years since I became the lone wanderer, far from friends, family and homeland. Each journey seems to take me further West. The first and longest stop was rainy England and the dreaming spires of Oxford, where I received my Masters and Ph.D. in engineering. It took me seven years to leave that field and pursue what had always lingered inside me and matters most: the environment. A Masters in environmental policy later and a “beneficial” (think cod liver oil) stint doing energy markets consulting, left me in search of drier climates and a position where I could really make a difference. The second stop was Washington D.C., where I joined NRDC as a Science Fellow, working on Carbon Capture & Sequestration. From reading technical papers to walking the halls of Congress, my job is to make sure that the policies are in place for this technology to reduce global warming pollution from fossil fuel use. And I do so while making sure that other, truly sustainable and renewable solutions are used first. Third stop? Our San Francisco office, where finally I have been reunited with the ocean that I love so much, after twelve years. Why do I not return home? Because I want to look back one day and know that I tried my best. Right now, tackling global warming is one of our most pressing needs, and U.S. action is the crucial missing piece.

Roots in:
Athens, Greece
Favorite place:
A sailing boat, somewhere in the Aegean Sea
Why "environmentalism" matters:
Environmentalism means different things to different people. Some see it as climbing buildings and erecting protest banners. Others as roaming the jungles trying to save endangered species. To me it is not about asceticism, but about increasing our quality of life and leaving a better world behind. Harnessing our creativity and finding better ways to do things in harmony with our natural surroundings. I have hugged a tree – it did not seem to mind. Why does environmentalism matter? Because we live on an ingeniously balanced and staggeringly beautiful planet that has taken some 4.5 billion years to evolve to its present state. We are one of the most recent additions, the most intelligent, the most potent. It is our duty to preserve Earth. Monty Python summarized it best of all in their Galaxy Song: “Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, revolving at 900 miles an hour. It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned, The Sun, which is the source of all our power. The Sun, and you and me, and all the stars that you can see, are moving at a million miles a day In the outer-spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, of the Galaxy we call "The Milky Way". Our Galaxy itself contains a hundred-billion stars, it's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick, but out by us, it's just 3,000 light years wide. We're 30,000 light years from Galactic Central Point, we go round every 200 million years, And our Galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe! The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whizz, As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know, 12 million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!” I hope that last statement does not turn out to be true. I am an optimist.

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