Pat on the Back: Mark Ruffalo

This week's "Pat on the Back" goes to Mr. Mark Ruffalo. 

Besides being a dreamy film actor, Mark Ruffalo has taken on many environmental activism projects and water protection is a cause particularly close to his heart.

His big, green Hulk heart. 

Ruffalo has been widely noted for his environmental activism since 2011 when he received the Entertainment Industry Environmental Leadership Award from Global Green. 

Here's why he won the award according to Hollywood Reporter.com:

"The award to Ruffalo is in recognition of his campaign to ban hydrofracking, a controversial method of extracting natural gas from underground shale beds. 'Right now, the big fight is stopping doing gas drilling in the Delaware River basin, which is where 15 million people get their drinking water,' Ruffalo -- who lives not far from the river in the Catskills area of upstate New York -- tells The Hollywood Reporter. As seen in the Oscar-nominated 2010 movie Gasland, fracking is believed to be a threat to clean water, in some cases sullying groundwater enough to make tap water flammable. The natural-gas industry disputes that."

More recently, Ruffalo has been working with Water Defense in a very public way to raise funds for the environmental organization. And I'm just saying---not buying one of these shirts when I had the chance is among my biggest regrets.

Back in September, Ruffalo also appeared on a Food & Water Watch press call to ask President Obama to ban fracking and transform the United States into a global leader in renewable energy. 

"By stopping this fracking, it doesn't mean that we have to go backwards-we don't have to take an economic hit or lose jobs," Ruffalo said. "It means moving forward with clean energy, the power of the 21st century."

These are just a few of the ways Ruffalo is joining the movement against climate change and providing publicity for organizations that are trying to clean up the environment. 

Keep up the good work, Mark Buffalo.