Weather is what’s happening in the air around us, and climate is how it is, long term, where we are. At least, that’s what we used to mean, back when a location came with a climate: temperate, tropical, sunny, or moist.  Seasonal variations were part of the idea of climate – summer, winter, monsoon, mistral – but there was little room for other change within the concept.  On the other hand, the weather changes constantly, giving us a way to make conversation in elevators with total strangers or romantic rivals.

At the end of the nineteenth century,  Arhennius pointed out that man-made variations in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere could alter the earth’s temperature, and the science of climate change was born.  A fringe activity until around 1990, it now attracts most of the attention of atmospheric scientists, since it is well established that if we continue our wasteful ways we will irretrievably alter the earth’s climate, and not in a good way.

But all this talk of climate change is about long term statistical quantities, like average temperature, area of minimum arctic sea ice, fraction of coral reefs bleached past recovery, or the range of altitudes over which the edelweiss can flower.  Ask a climate scientist about the severity of the rainstorm last Sunday night and she will suggest that you talk to a weather analyst, since no individual weather event can be directly tied to the slow process of climate change.

Well, for any individual event, that’s probably true.  But have you been following the news lately?  Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, has, and in an astonishing op-ed piece published in the Washington Post he implicitly challenges climate scientists to deal not with individual weather events, but with the extraordinary series of floods, tornadoes, and everything but a rain of frogs that have been devastating one locality after another.  I won’t tell you his conclusion because everyone should read the entire piece for themselves. Less time than you’ve already put in, guaranteed!

Photo credit: NASA

As noted in our newsletter today, Curtis Ravenel, Global Head of Bloomberg’s Sustainability Group, will deliver the Keynote at our upcoming conference, Speak Green.

We invited Curtis to speak both because of his strong background on these issues and because Bloomberg has just released their first ever annual sustainability report.  Corporations release sustainability reports all the time, so what makes this one special?  In our minds there are three strong reasons: scale, exposure and ambition.

With more than 12,000 employees and annual revenues of nearly $7 billion,  any initiatives  Bloomberg LP adopts are poised to have a dramatic impact.  As one of the highest profile media organizations in the world, their initiatives are likely to draw far more attention than those of a typical corporation, and if successful will serve as a beacon for many other organizations.  Bloomberg’s position within the financial industry is critically important.  The business cases for sustainability and green building are being built step by step, project by project.  But with a relatively limited number of green building projects available as examples, Wall Street has largely been reluctant to recognize their financial benefits.

Continue Reading

The farmers’ market at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn

Michael Pollan has a fantastic survey of the rapidly growing food movement in the current New York Review of Books. As always, Pollan manages to illuminate a subject with many moving parts in a very small space.

He delivers a succinct history of the movement and describes the many facets of food activism, from environmental to public health issues to more esoteric but no less important subjects like community and democracy.  He points out that this breadth makes it an attractive focus for people on both the left and right of the political divide- one of the many reasons it is a subject with the capacity to really transform the political landscape.  Perhaps most importantly, he points out that locavore tendencies are often rooted in a desire to reformulate traditional consumer culture.  His finish is pretty good as well . . .

. . . food is invisible no longer and, in light of the mounting costs we’ve incurred by ignoring it, it is likely to demand much more of our attention in the future, as eaters, parents, and citizens. It is only a matter of time before politicians seize on the power of the food issue, which besides being increasingly urgent is also almost primal, indeed is in some deep sense proto- political. For where do all politics begin if not in the high chair?—at that fateful moment when mother, or father, raises a spoonful of food to the lips of the baby who clamps shut her mouth, shakes her head no, and for the very first time in life awakens to and asserts her sovereign power.

Local and sustainable food is a subject fairly well outside our focus here at Urban Green, where our eyes are typically trained on green buildings.  But of course most folks in both camps are pulling in the same direction.  We all want to reduce our impact on the environment and support systems that enable healthy (in every sense of the word) communities.  In recognition of this synergy, and cognizant that our shared missions are rarely discussed or acted upon, last year we developed a really remarkable event called Hungry New York.  We gathered 100 folks from both the local/sustainable food and green building communities for a local meal.  The audience included architects, farmers, bakers, engineers and everyone in between.  Hosted by City Bakery, our master of ceremony was English architect and author Carolyn Steel, whose book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives was the inspiration for both the title and content of our event.  With a short talk from Carolyn as catalyst the dinner spurred myriad discussions and I am happy to report that a number of partnerships were formed that evening- resulting in quite a few unexpected collaborations.  It was a huge success and we are hoping to hold the second such event this October- and with any luck we’ll have Carolyn to lead the way once again.  Look out for more details in this space.

The C2C Certified Celle chair from Herman Miller

William McDonough and Michael Braungart have taken Cradle to Cradle certification into the public domain with the launch of the Green Products Innovation Institute (GPII). Until now, the data and processes behind the transformative C2C certification program were privately held by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC). MBDC has donated their 20 years of C2C intellectual property rights to GPII in the hopes expanding it’s breadth and reach globally. You can read details about how GPII will structure delivery and assessment of the C2C protocols here and here.

GPII will provide an open, public database of product chemical data and will also list alternative “positive” chemicals, processes and systems companies might use to protect people from toxins. After 20 years of work MBDC has processed more than 300 C2C certifications and while many of these products are truly remarkable (like the 99% recyclable Celle chair from Herman Miller pictured above) there can be no doubt that the launch of GPII is an attempt to influence a vastly greater number of products, industries and countries.

You can bet we will hear more about this development during William McDonough’s Opening Keynote on September 29th at our annual conference, Urban Green Expo.

Post Occupancy Evaluations are gaining traction here in the States but, like a lot of things, are significantly more advanced in Europe.  NYAS brings together a panel that includes local luminaries Adam Hinge of Sustainable Energy Partnerships and Brian Schwagerl of the Hearst Corporation as well as Stephan Plesser from Braunschweig Technical University in Germany.  Should be an excellent dialogue on an important emerging subject.

A study by the EPA provides further evidence of our perceived shift from a nation fleeing cities to a nation returning to our urban cores.  According the the New York Times:

In 26 of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, the share of residential construction taking place in central cities more than doubled since 2000.

The full study is available here.

On the topic of diverse communities- Urban Omnibus provides an overview of NORCs, or Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. I first learned of this concept from Rick Cook at Cook + Fox Architects and have been enormously intrigued by the notion ever since. The gist is that, rather than encouraging seniors to live in purpose-built senior centers, we recognize senior communities that have collected organically in a building or neighborhood. The Urban Omnibus piece mentions that these communities are recognized by local governments and are therefore eligible for support services funds- which is really fantastic. Also fantastic is the chance to use words like INNORCORATION.

Urban Ominbus are working on a book called NORCS IN NYC, from which the image above was borrowed. Both the image and the concept remind me of Christopher Alexander’s strange and inspiring book, A Pattern Language- required reading at the University of Oregon, where I studied Architecture. One of the “patterns” advocated for in the book is “Old People Everywhere.” Setting aside the jarring title from the pre-politically-correct-speech era (old people?) it basically encouraged diversity within communities; diversity of color, and culture, and income, and, yes, age. Not so radical a concept but certainly something nearly lost in recent years and now supported by models like NORCs.

Alice Rawsthorn on a Davos panel she recently moderated with William McDonough, Cameron Sinclair and Tim Brown.

Lance Hosey says green building needs “less tech and more touch.”

A new law takes effect this week that should make getting bikes into commercial buildings far less of a hassle than it has been. As a regular bike commuter I have always been surprised by the varying degrees of accommodation bikes get at building entrances. I have worked in dumpy buildings with cave-like lobbies that treated my bike like a bomb. And I work now in a gorgeous landmark building whose lobby is covered with marble and they let me roll my bike right into the passenger elevator like a regular citizen. Hopefully this law will provide some much needed uniformity for those who choose to ride to work.