Hometown Hero: Barry Barish

Ocean Park resident, physicist, Linde Professor of Physics at Cal Tech and President-Elect of the American Physical Society, the association of physicists, Barry Barish, in talking about his work, said, “I study matter. At the beginning there were equal particles and anti particles. When put together they annihilate each other and make energy. For a reason we don’t know, after the Big Bang, there were excess particles and those particles are why we exist.

“I believe the best science comes when we do science to learn science and not to create widgets. But you should know that the World Wide Web comes from the work of particle physicists and was invented at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) near Geneva and at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). The collaboration necessary between the two labs required transmitting huge amounts of data. In solving the problem of how to share the data, scientists created the World Wide Web, which has become part of, and changed, our daily lives.

“Stimulated emission was an idea postulated in 1917 by Einstein. The laser (light amplified stimulated emission radiation) was first demonstrated 50 years ago this month, at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu. The science of the laser has made possible laser printers, the DVD, bar codes, and, of course, many advances in medicine.

“Probably the biggest problem of our time is energy. The evidence for global warming is overwhelming but not irrefutable. Whatever you think of global warming as a problem, it’s a fact that we are putting a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere because of the use of fossil fuels. It’s a ‘one-time experiment’ we’re doing without knowing what the effects will be. What we do know is that we have no way to reverse global warming.

“We can’t afford a one-time experiment. We’ve never seen this much carbon in the atmosphere. It’s a scientific and technical problem but it’s a real problem and we need to improve the ways to go from research to practical applications. There can be no ‘one way’ now to meet our demand for energy, so all alternatives to fossil fuels should be used.

“It’s hard to spend money on pure science when there are so many problems in the world. But these problems can’t be solved with only slogans or only money. We need knowledge.”

Writing this article, I thought he might prefer if I used his “real’ name, which I didn’t know. Seems his first grade teacher, without any way of knowing he would one day be a physicist, also wanted to know his ‘real’ name. When she asked, he said, ‘Barry.’ Assuming he was just giving her a hard time, she told him she would call him ‘John’. That lasted until Parents Day when his parents confirmed his ‘real’ name was Barry.

As a young student, Barry was interested in how things worked and remembers, that at age 6, he puzzled over why ice floated in water since both were made of water. (If you also wonder why ice floats in water, try Google.)

At 13 his father gave Barry a job helping on wheel alignment and wheel balancing at his shop. Barry then went to the library to study and taught himself everything about car suspension, much more than he needed to know for the work he was supposed to do.

Barry said, “I didn’t have the objective of being a scientist. In high school what I wanted was to be a tennis player. And I was All City in LA. In college, still playing on the Berkeley tennis team, I studied engineering. I was soon cured of the idea of engineering by the drafting and survey classes. But the problem solving of physics appealed to me. My interest increased over time. I enjoyed physics and was good at it and the more I learned the better I got and the more I liked it.

“I have questions that can’t be answered and I look for answers. Being a physicist is a combination of having a high aptitude for math, a great curiosity and a willingness to be creative. I was always a scientist in attitude, but it took many years to develop the tools to be a real scientist.”

Barry often rides the beach bike path, enjoying the good weather and sunshine. He thinks about Santa Monica and offers this idea, “Our city could be a model energy efficiency city. The question would be how to stimulate energy efficiency in the city so that we achieve a meaningful result.” And he wonders if that’s a problem we want to solve.

What Say You? Seventh Generation and Living Homes

The Iroquois concept that, “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations," is the origin of the company name ‘Seventh Generation.’

Jeffrey Hollender, the head of Seventh Generation, a company that manufactures and markets sustainable cleaning products, spoke about the company he founded 22 years ago and his new book “The Responsibility Revolution.”

The decision to write the “The Responsibility Revolution came from Hollender’s realization that “although the concepts of responsible business are making their way into the larger business world, we are no where near what it will take to meet the problems we face.”

One of the challenges, says Hollender, is that “we have confused ‘less bad’ with ‘good’ and that will not get us to where we need to be. We need to repair the damage to the environment and the culture, not just to stop doing harm.”

In order not to fail, in order to force change, Hollender makes a series of suggestions beginning with requiring ‘full cost accounting.’ He suggests that we no longer allow companies to keep books that externalize costs. His example is agriculture. “Require agriculture to pay for costs of pollution to water, soil, air, and public health which are caused by standard agricultural practices. Currently those costs are externalized and become public governmental or personal costs. “If agriculture paid for externalized costs then sustainable farming would be the more cost effective model.”

Transparency should be the rule in organizational structures as well as in bookkeeping. “Transparency is about what your stakeholders want to know rather than what you want to tell. Stakeholders want to know the good, the bad and the ugly. It is important to remember that disclosure of what is wrong is almost always helpful. More, transparency creates an authenticity that is beneficial.”

“I live,” said Hollender, “in a world of irreconcilable differences. I run a sustainable business. I sit on the Board of Greenpeace and I am a consultant with Wal-Mart. Five years ago I started the American Sustainable Business Council to be a counterforce to the Chamber of Commerce. We now have about 40,000 members and are becoming a voice that is listened to in Washington.”

“The rate at which our problems are accelerating makes me afraid that we will fail.” Hollender warns. He has a blog called the ‘inspired protagonist.’ The name suits him.

The event was sponsored by the Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and was held at Steven Glenn’s home in Ocean Park. Glenn founded SBC to provide a local forum for businesspeople working to develop sustainable businesses. He is also the owner/developer of the pre-fab company www.livinghomes.net.

Crowded into the house were bankers and accountants, developers and architects, tech and green business owners, wanting to hear Jeff Hollender and also wanting to see the Ray Kappe designed, pre-fab home built and owned by Steven Glenn.

The 2500 square foot house had six sustainability criteria to meet. The “Z6” goals. Zero energy, zero water, zero carbon, zero emissions, zero waste, and zero ignorance. Glenn wanted to place a value on form, function, health, and sustainability and offer a beautiful alternative.

The house itself is modern, light and airy, with a two-story living space, a second story of bedrooms and studies connected to the outside with large decks.
You can see the rain chain and the native plants in the garden, but the elements of the house that meet the Z6 criteria are not immediately noticeable.

The steel used in the construction comes from steel in old cars; photovoltaics, used a sunscreen on a second story deck, provide power; gray water systems and a large, underground cistern provide garden irrigation; toilets are low flow and dual flush; the insulation rate is high; appliances are energy efficient.

For the final Z6 goal Glenn used his background in Internet technology and has created programs such as tracking systems for home energy use that provide feedback and offer alternatives. He thinks people are serious about wanting to make sustainable choices and his goal is to assist people to take their responsibility seriously.

Any of these ideas could be incorporated into existing buildings and all new buildings could be required to meet all these standards.

What Say You?