Fighting the good fight

Everyone kept telling me that Los Angeles was like another world, but I refused to believe them. The movie biz had it's fingers in everything, they said. That didn't matter to me.

There are two schools of thought on environmental activism. The first camp tries preserve the few remaining untouched parts of the world. But like the observed quantum particle, their mere presence changes it. They fight the spread of chaos, holding on to their pristine biomes desperately, knowing that they will eventually fail.

Then there are the people like me. The ones that know there's no point in fighting the human impact on the world from the places humans rarely go. We go to the big places, the centers of pollution and corruption. Places like New York, or like Detroit. Places like LA.

Since I moved here six months ago, I've been to twenty protests, three green energy conventions, and two city council meetings where I spoke on ballot initiatives that would raise penalties on companies that violated EPA regulations and use that money to fund renewable energy research.

There's been a little less smog in the air lately. There's been a bit of order in the chaos. But as I stand here, drinking my latte in Starbuck's, I wonder if the city has changed me, too.