Growing up

As a young man, I became familiar with pollution first hand. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs. The air that came my way in South Jersey, downwind from the big factories in Philly, was obviously and visibly polluted throughout my childhood in the 1960s and early 70s. The creek near my childhood home was polluted, and often overflowed with smelly sewage. I found out at an early age how destructive that is, if you fell in or your dog went swimming in it, you had a major and clean up to do…immediately.

Most of our relatives lived in NY, so my family used to drive through New Jersey to New York , home to some of the most obviously polluted areas in the world, with all manner of oil refineries, chemical plants, chemical dumps etc. I learned the different impacts of different factories, I could even tell you where we were by the smell. The chemical plants used to gag you if you caught a whiff while driving by on the turnpike.

The event that got me really stirred about this was the first Earth Day in 1970. Coincidentally at that time, I had a teacher who asked us to read a book entitled “Silent Spring”, by Rachel Carson. This book really opened my eyes to our destructive impact on the birds, and by extension, all of the environment. I understood that we were building a technology that was unsustainable in the long run and eventually would destroy us.

I decided at that point, at age 16, that I had to do something about it. I went on to college, majored in environmental design, and took as many courses as I could relevant to environmental conservation and energy efficiency. I gravitated to HVAC engineering after graduation and since I have always tried to design the most energy efficient solutions. Signifying my commitment to this, I became a LEED accredited professional in 2006. My career has been, and will continue to be focused on energy efficient, sustainable building designs, and reducing our societies impact on the planet to net zero..