It's Your Oregon: Ricardo Umana

Trained as an Electrical Engineer, Richard speaks frequently on global warming issues. Using his experience with energy efficient technologies he is working toward a more sustainable carbon-neutral world.

Richard grew up in Central America, and spent most of his childhood years in El Salvador. Even then he understood the role of poverty in the world, relating to global warming and human health.

He attended high school in Buffalo, New York and later attended Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.

While working as a contractor in New Zealand for a large energy management company, he was supervised by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) of New Zealand. It’s at this point that Richard says he awakened to the environmental movement. “I worked for a large producer of CO2 for 10 years, and after doing extensive research on new technologies, I became intrigued by all the things we could do to improve how we use energy,” says Richard.

Richard moved to Oregon one and half years ago, and has enjoyed his time here thus far. He moved to Portland to be apart of the environmental movement.

Richard remembers watching Bill Bradbury’s December 3^rd, 2007 global warming presentation and connecting on many levels with this issue. He believes that the climate crisis can be described as an inconvenient human ecology. He believes that it is a great moral and spiritual challenge for people to truly make change.

He is putting his beliefs into action. For three months, Richard is volunteering a day a week of his time to work on the Climate Coolers project, OEC’s awareness-raising program in partnership with Bill Bradbury. To join the Climate Cooler email list, click here.

Richard is also speaking out, as in this Univision TV interview (en Espanol).

As a member of the Spanish speaking community, Richard has become highly involved in bringing presentations translated into Spanish for churches around the Portland metro area. He feels the root of the problem concerning the Spanish speaking community is lack of consciousness. He feels there are steps we need to follow in order to correct this: learn, motivate, and act. Some of the barriers Richard talks about are education, time, and motivation within the Spanish speaking communities around Oregon. However, he feels very strongly that making information and resources available to everyone will tear down those barriers and build a stronger community around solving global warming.