The work of the Building Resiliency Task Force, convened at the request of Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn, is now well underway; over 200 members have rolled up their sleeves and taken a first pass at detailed policy proposals.

This week the Task Force Steering Committee is sharing two key documents that chart our progress:

1. Working Group & Committee Guidelines provides a high level statement about our common and differing expectations for the various building sectors (Residential, Commercial, Critical, and    Homes).

2. Summary of Proposals frame the proposals we have heard thus far from the working groups and committees. It’s a summary and conceptual overview; teams are  hard at work on the details that underlay each “big idea.”

As reflected in the Guidelines, there are certain parameters common to all building types, including an expectation to drive change through best practices, removing barriers, and heightening standards for new construction in areas not covered by existing codes.  But we also see very different levels of public interest and obligation for different building types, especially when it comes to retroactive requirements.

On one end of the scale are commercial buildings, where we will largely look to the market and incentives to drive changes in existing buildings. On the other end are critical buildings, which we expect to be fully functional no matter what our changing climate may bring. And somewhere in the middle are residential buildings where some level of functionality is absolutely necessary, though we must balance any requirements against financial hardship.

These documents will guide our work going forward. We look forward to early summer when the Task Force’s work will be complete and we can issue our report and recommendations.

At the request of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Urban Green Council has convened a special Building Resiliency Task Force of leaders in the NYC real estate community. The Task Force is taking an in-depth look at how to better prepare our buildings for future extreme weather events and infrastructure failures, and the grand kickoff was this morning, with Task Force members assembled for the first time.

Held in the Council Chambers at City Hall, over 100 Task Force members gathered to hear Speaker Quinn, Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, and Commissioner of Buildings Robert LiMandri welcome them and describe the urgency of their work. Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability Director Sergej Mahnovski described some of the challenges facing New York City infrastructure and how this may affect buildings during future extreme events.

Members also learned more about the purview and structure of the Task Force. As described by Russell Unger, Urban Green Council’s Executive Director, the Task Force will consider both direct effects of extreme weather on buildings, such as flooding or wind damage, as well as secondary effects on buildings caused by infrastructure outages like loss of electricity and water. The Task Force will be fully focused on buildings, both new construction and potential retrofits to existing structures. The Task Force will not take up the important issues of infrastructure or zoning, which are being considered simultaneously by other city groups; as the city’s overall response to Sandy and preparation for other potential risks develops, the Task Force will adapt its process to fit in harmoniously with the larger effort. The Task Force will also include a “rapid rebuilding” component, to fast-track the review of policy proposals affecting buildings currently under consideration by City agencies and the City Council.

My role was to explain the inner workings of the Task Force itself. The main technical efforts will take place in Working Groups, organized by functional area and expertise and co-chaired by designers (architects and engineers). With input from cost, code, and legal experts, the Working Groups will develop proposals based for all types of buildings. These proposals will then be considered  by Committees, organized by building type (Residential, Commercial, and Critical buildings, the latter including hospitals, senior centers, shelters, fire stations, and so forth) and co-chaired by owners. The Committees will consider what parts of the technical proposals should apply to which buildings, with the most stringency likely given to Critical buildings, then Residential, and finally Commercial buildings, with the latter perhaps leaning more towards suggested best practices rather than new requirements. Put simply, Working Groups work in their technical area of expertise to describe what could be done, and Committees work in their building type area to decide by should be done.

There is also a separate Homes Committee, since the issues facing 1-3 family structures are unique. The Task Force will also have At-Large members, with wide-ranging expertise who will consult across all proposals, and a Steering Committee made up of the co-chairs plus representatives from Urban Green Council and New York City government agencies, the Mayor’s Office, and the City Council. The Task Force is blessed with an incredible array of highly experienced experts, including owners, property managers, architects, engineers, contractors, subject matter specialists, and representatives of utilities, city agencies, code consulting, cost estimating and law.

To dive in as deeply and as quickly as possible when meetings begin in the new year, it’s important that all members of the Task Force have a common understanding of what risks the city is facing, now and in the future. We were very lucky to hear remarks from Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University. Dr. Rosenzweig was able to compare current risks to those New York City may face in upcoming decades due to climate change. 100-year coastal floods may occur every 15-35 years by 2080, with flood heights increasing by 1-2 feet. Similarly, the risks of heat waves and intense rains will also increase. It was sobering to see the extent of the hazards we may encounter, but knowing the science gives the Task Force a firm base upon which to begin its work.

The Task Force will release a report in summer, 2013. Stay tuned for updates between now and then!

There is no doubt that we need to transform our entire consumer process.  The question is: How?  Most of the focus is on simple reductions in the amount of consumption, but folks like Michael Braungart of Cradle to Cradle fame are imagining a different path.

There are many ways to look at this issue but the first step is understanding the scale of problem we are dealing with.  The environmental impact of our consumption is staggering, but rather than bury you in the raw data on our depletion of global resources and our poisoning of the planetary ecosystem, I will simply point to some of Chris Jordan’s photographs- among the most effective means of communicating the terrifying scale of our impact that I have seen anywhere.   I’ve posted these before on this blog, and if you have visited the offices of Urban Green you’ll see some of these hanging on the walls.

The image above looks like blurry grey pixels but is actually a composite image of 426,000  cell phones- the number that are “retired” every single day in the US alone.

Again- the above looks like colored pixels but is actually a composite of 38,000  shipping containers- the number that move through U.S. ports every 12 hours.

It’s clear, I think, just from looking at these images that something has to give.  The planet simply can’t produce enough precious metals, fossil fuels, wood pulp and other raw materials to sustain this wild orgy of consumption.  If the photographs aren’t compelling I recommend you spend a few minutes with Annie Leonard’s short movie, The Story of Stuff.

So what do we do?  Those of us that care about this subject spend most of our time getting people to use less- a simple message of conservation.  It’s a natural response to the problem of over-consumption- but maybe there’s another way to frame the problem.  As William McDonough (co-author of  Cradle to Cradle) has said, being “more efficient” with resources is like a driver whose destination is Mexico finding that he is heading north toward Canada and responding by driving slower.  You haven’t really corrected the fundamental problem.  You need to turn the car around, 180 degrees.

In terms of our material cycle this would mean rethinking what we mean by “resources” instead of simply displacing a small percentage of raw materials with down-cycled product waste.  (The classic example here is turning copy paper into newsprint and newsprint into cardboard and . . . . cardboard into landfill waste.  You’ve spared using raw wood pulp twice, which is great, but that is all.)  In nature, these questions have been answered.  Millions of years of evolution has produced almost perfectly balanced ecosystems in which all waste is essentially food for the rest of the system.  A tree falls in the forest.  Whether anyone hears it or not, it is now food.  The tree is not sent to a landfill.  It is not shredded into 10,000 tiny pieces and distributed around the globe so that it is unrecoverable as a nutrient.

Along these lines, Michael Braungart has an article on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website encouraging us to treat CO2 emissions, that bogeyman of global warming, as a valuable resource.  Now, the message from Braungart isn’t that we shouldn’t be trying to curtail our CO2 emissions- but that in the absence of federal and global leadership in this arena there is no reason we shouldn’t be finding ways to encourage industry to use those emissions.  And there are uses for CO2.  Examples Braungart provides include industrial greenhouse agriculture that introduces huge quantities of CO2 as a nutrient for plants, and similar applications of CO2 to support the growth of algae for biofuels.  As our political system remains ineffective in the face of such a complicated set of problems, reorienting our thinking along the lines promoted by McDonough and Braungart might be just what is required.

Dear Friends,

The Staff and Board of Directors at Urban Green Council wish you and your families the best during this trying time in the tri-state area. We know many of you have been without power in your homes and offices since the storm hit, and some have suffered far worse.

Among other things, this storm has left us at Urban Green thinking about how personally buildings affect our lives. We have also been considering, from the range of issues we tackle as an organization, what the right emphasis is to place on maintaining the habitability of buildings during a major infrastructure failure. The NYC Green Codes Task Force struggled with this question back in 2008 when it was somewhat in the realm of the hypothetical. The consensus on the Task Force at that time was that it didn’t make sense to impose any major requirements on buildings to improve their resilience.

We recommended fairly limited code changes like requiring toilets and sinks to be able to operate in a blackout, water tanks to be retained in buildings that already had them, and that protective measures be taken for hazardous materials stored in flood zones. One significant exception is that we proposed flood maps be based on projected future flooding that takes into account climate change instead of historical flooding. In an article published in the Gotham Gazette on Monday, advocacy director Cecil Scheib and I discuss the challenge of addressing building resilience through public and private efforts, but it’s an uphill battle.

It’s breathtaking to witness the destructive scenario now unfolding in lower Manhattan. Countless high-rise buildings have been rendered inoperable due to the power outage now in its fourth day. For most of these buildings, especially public housing, this means there has been no water to flush toilets unless it was carried upstairs by hand, no water to wash dishes, and no water for showers. And it’s dark. New buildings are required to include backup generators for elevators and water. In light of Sandy, we (and many others) will be thinking hard about potential new requirements for existing building stock.

Was Sandy climate change in action? The technical answer is that no particular weather event can be ascribed to climate change, but the increased frequency of extreme weather events has been predicted by climate scientists for years. Governor Cuomo nailed the general sentiment with his comment this week: “We have a 100-year flood every two years now.” About the only good thing that can be said about Sandy is that it may prompt more serious discussion about climate change.

This terrible storm is a good reminder of the critical importance of the work of the green building movement and Urban Green Council. We are hoping to minimize the number of storms like Sandy through our efforts to reduce carbon pollution, but we nevertheless need to prepare and adapt for more of them in the future. If you are interested in volunteer opportunities to help in the aftermath of this storm please visit NYC Service.

Please note that our office in lower Manhattan remains closed until power and access is restored but most of the staff remain available via email. Again, we hope this message finds you safe, and we look forward to working with you on the many lessons to be learned from Sandy.

Sincerely,

“If you have information that is important to the public, you should try to communicate it.”
-Dr. James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

A couple weeks ago Urban Green gathered a NASA scientist, leaders of environmental organizations responding to climate change, academics with expertise in understanding how Americans assess risk and deal with this issue, and design professionals trying to communicate their environmentally responsible intents to clients. As one of the organizers of the event, I was anticipating a good conference full of new information and insight.  What I didn’t anticipate was the fluidity of the morning and the fantastic ability of the speakers to play off of one another to draw out new conclusions and leave the audience with a such clear set of principles for talking about climate change.  Actually, make that carbon pollution.

As noted in our live blog posts and other pieces since the conference, it’s clear that climate change and carbon pollution can be challenging topics for discussion. It’s a global problem that requires immediate action and potential sacrifice to produce benefits in a near or distant future, but it’s not widely viewed as a pressing problem.  It’s easy to think someone else will sort it all out for us. Unfortunately, we know this is not the case, but luckily our speakers discussed a host of ways we can hone our message and get through to our colleagues, clients, and others.

If you were unable to attend or you were in the audience and would like a refresher, we’ve provided an overview below. Urban Green Council members can also take a look at the presentations through our secure weblink.

How to talk about climate change in five easy steps:

1. First and foremost, know your audience. All of our communication experts agreed it’s best to have multiple messages for different groups; family, friends, staff, clients, public, etc. Talk to scientists with graphs and charts, speak to clients about health and cost savings, encourage colleagues with business opportunity and productivity improvements, and stir family members to action with personal benefits to children and grandchildren.

2. Scientific facts alone do not convince many people of the dangers (or existence) of climate change. However, talking about climate pollution and associated health risks, for example, make the problem more real and actionable. According to speaker David Ropeik, the brain is four parts subconscious and one part conscious, which means reason is only one-fifth of the decision-making process. He suggests discussing risks that are local and personal instead of global and abstract.

3. Credibility is key so speak from your area of expertise.  Trusted validators from various fields need to deliver the message. All of us in the green building community from developers to construction workers should be speaking out.

4. Counter specific arguments.  This means you must be well-versed in the arguments made by those who support climate action and those who do not.

5. Talk about solutions and quality of life improvements. Don’t just dwell on the problem without proposing solutions. It can be very dismal as compared to opportunities for improvement. Show how changes that mitigate climate change improve health and quality of life and can also improve business. Panelist Dan Probst of Jones Lang LaSalle argued that you can increase financial returns while reducing carbon pollution.

Once you figured out what to say it’s important to remember to do more than talk; act.  As part of the green building community we have the ability to speak out about climate change and the risk of carbon pollution AND take action in the projects we design, develop, and occupy. Let your organization be a driver of change.

That’s all it takes. For those of you who were there, we would love to hear your comments on the day and what you’ll take away from the conference.  Do you have new ideas on how to speak about climate change? Please add your comments below.

Panelist David Ropeik at Cooling on Climate Change

Urban Green pulled together a fascinating conference last week on the current science of climate change, exploring how it is impacting the building industry and why polls reveal public skepticism on the subject.  The format included two excellent panels and a short keynote by the distinguished scientist and activist, Dr. James Hansen.  There was a lot of intellectual firepower on display, including fascinating data on perceptions of climate change from Lisa Fernandez at Yale, and deep discussions of the role of the building industry.  David Ropeik, a risk perception consultant and the author, most recently, of How Risky Is It Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, offered the most unexpected perspectives of any speaker and clearly challenged our assumptions about how to effectively message on climate change.

Ropeik walked the audience through the current neurological research on risk perception, all of which supports the sense many of us have had over the years- that something as abstract and slow moving as climate change does not appear to motivate most of us to change our behavior.  Ropeik points out that very few of the tools we use to assess risk are cognitive- most of them are subconscious.  Our brains are wired to focus on things that will impact us directly, right now or in the very near future.  Threats that are catastrophic are deeply important, but chronic issues barely register on our internal threat scale.  Most of us in the environmental community act as if the simple communication of additional knowledge will cause people to change their minds- the more facts people know about climate change the more they will be motivated to change behavior.  But a deep body of research (and probably if we are honest with ourselves and our own experiences) tells us this simply is not the case.  People are not generally motivated to significantly alter their behavior because of threats to other species, or threats to our own that are likely to occur years from now.  Mr. Ropeik’s distillation of this context colored all the other discussions at the event and made for lively discussion.  In this context, Mr. Hansens’ slides communicating the impact of climate change through bar graphs and statistical plots seemed, though intellectually rigorous and important research, seemed somehow not up to the task at hand.  Based on Mr. Ropeik’s presentation I came away with the overwhelming sense that we need to find new ways of communicating that humanizes climate change and describes how it will impact each of us directly.

Which is not to minimize the critical importance of Hansen’s presentation.  For those of us familiar with his work and the work of his colleagues on the IPCC it was exciting (though sobering) to see the latest research on climate change.  Hansen pointed out that we have increased the amount of atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 390ppm, with every indication that average global temperature will increase by 2 degrees within a century.  The last time this happened, sea levels were 15 meters higher than today.  Already, significant changes are moving through the system.  The extent of arctic sea ice at the end of the melt season, as reported elsewhere, is reduced by half.  And the sea ice is significantly thinner, so the actual mass has been reduced by three-fourths.  This is a monumental shift that augurs more changes to come.  In addition, the % of land mass that experiences extreme weather events annually (droughts, flooding, fire) has increased 10 times since about 1920.  Dr. Hansen’s primary concern today are impacts that might be irreversible- like losing the ice sheet altogether, or a melt off of the Greenland ice sheet, or climate zones that move so fast that it triggers mass extinctions and failing ecosystems.  These are sobering but very real possibilities in our near future.

To produce a reduction in greenhouse gases Dr. Hansen proposes a “fee and dividend” policy that would ramp up a tax on carbon emissions and distribute the collected money equally among the population.  The funds would not go to the government and if current subsidies were removed it would level the technological playing field.  With our political establishment locked in a sweaty wrestling hold that allows for considerable activity but no resolution, it is highly unlikely that Hansen’s proposal will be enacted, or even discussed seriously.  But considering such a proposal allows us, at a minimum, to contemplate the high degree to which our current system is reliant on petroleum, and the significant degree to which the “market” is currently weighted in favor of the fossil fuel industry- which dominates energy subsidies despite being wildly profitable and flexes its lobbying muscle to influence almost every aspect of federal and state energy policy.  As Dr. Hansen stated, “the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers.”  His fee and dividend proposal would remove the embedded advantage of the wealthiest industries and if ramped appropriately would spur innovation. Activism and individual action, Dr. Hansen points out, are wonderful but without a price signal that makes carbon emissions pay something like their share of externalized costs there will be little movement on the issue.  In fact, he seemed almost concerned that making buildings and other users of energy more efficient simply reduces demand and drives the price of oil down, incentivizing others to burn it.

Some years ago, Gore Vidal recommended that the world would be considerably improved if we simply swapped the cost of a university education with the cost of an intercontinental airline ticket- thereby making education available to all and significantly reducing the swarms of tourists senselessly marauding the globe.   Whatever the merits of this improbable idea, Dr. Hansen’s “fee and dividend” proposal might go a long way to achieving Vidal’s dream.  In a world where there is no tax on aviation fuel- the “market” will have to change significantly for us to re-assess how we do things. Without a bold move like carbon tax it is difficult to feel confident about our prospects for combating climate change.  As we wait (hopefully not in vain) for such a solution to gain traction, it is heartening to consider how much we now know about how our brains function. Amory Lovins likes to say, “The good news about climate change is that it is cheaper to fix than it is to ignore.”  The bad news might be that we are not well equipped to deal with it.  Despite this, I found myself invigorated as I left the conference.  We are truly beginning to understand how, at a primal, subconscious level, we respond to long range threats. This knowledge suggests a way of crafting our messages that might actually compel a majority of us to take the threat of climate change seriously.  Nothing could be more important, though I can’t expect my saying that to change your mind.

The following was blogged live from our Fall Conference on September 18, 2012 – “Cooling on Climate Change: Designing the Message.” Panelist Dan Probst, Chairman of Energy and Sustainability Services at Jones Lang LaSalle, discusses the role of the green building industry in addressing global climate change.

The following was blogged live from our Fall Conference on September 18, 2012 – Cooling on Climate Change: Designing the Message.

In this first panel discussion this morning, speakers outlined a few key points that we can all use to capture the attention of varying audiences.

Elliot Diringer, C2ES says climate change is complicated by a number of conflicting characteristics.  Because it is a global phenomenon that affects cultures and landscapes in different ways, our message must be adaptable to different audiences around the world.  This, he says, is further complicated by the fact that the effects of climate change are still somewhat uncertain and being experienced sporadically and in different forms (if at all), making it difficult for individuals to understand the importance of taking immediate action.

Lisa Fernandez, Yale Project on Climate Change Communication shares her research showing that in the US, surveys show that the public perception of climate change has declined over the past few years as a result of the economy and unemployment, decreased media coverage, unusual cold weather, an effective “denial industry” and increasing political polarization.  She goes on to say these studies have also demonstrated that there are six different levels of climate change perception (alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, dismissive), all of which require tailored engagement strategies.  Each audience interprets facts differently to construct their own understanding of the issue.

David Ropeik, Author and Consultant at David Ropeik and Associates, wrapped up the powerpoint presentations with a summary of the science behind how our brains actually process information.  He outlined the five components of risk perception, only one of which addresses the conscious, which is our ability to reason.  All other components come from our subconscious and deal with how we use mental shortcuts, circumstantial generalization, and common social influences to assess the risk associated with a certain event.  In summary, Ropeik illustrated that risks will not seem applicable to the individual if they don’t concern the individual on a level that is personal, local, and immediate.

Speakers agreed that effective messages must maintain credibility for the movement by staying close to facts outlined by current scientific research but counting on science alone won’t work. Spreading this knowledge is important, but that appealing to an individual’s (or a culture’s) emotions, values, and ideology also play a critical role in messaging effectively.  Finally, the message must appeal to the current social, political, and economic forces that are impacting an individual’s current perspective.

If you’re taking notes, write this down for tips to create and effective climate change message:

-        Present scientific data and consensus that climate change is real

-        Convey the real risks and impacts that climate change has on humans and focus on health consequences.

-        Portray linkage to recent extreme weather conditions

-        Avoid referring to climate change as an idea

-        Remind your audience that it’s solvable through immediate action

More to come in the next panel (The Role of the Green Building Industry) as we look to our “non-scientist validators”  to speak out to other key audiences.  Stay tuned for an update!

The following was blogged live from our Fall Conference on September 18, 2012 – Cooling on Climate Change: Designing the Message.

Does geo-engineering have a role to play in climate mitigation? Should we be researching seeding the atmosphere with soot to try to lower global temperatures, for example?

Renowned expert James Hansen, speaking today at Urban Green’s fall conference says it might. “Unfortunately, we are going to pass a dangerous point,” and so it may become necessary.

On the other hand, he points out that “geo-engineering is not a long term solution.” Often, it focuses on limiting solar energy input in order to cool temperatures, but this does not affect other issues already in progress as a result of increased carbon levels, such as ocean acidification and melting ice caps.

Hansen was drily realistic about the chances of geo-engineering success; as he put it, “Covering up one pollutant with another may have issues.” Luckily, he was not without proposals. In his conception, “the real solution has to be to get some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere.” This may include pricing carbon in some way, perhaps by a fee and dividend scheme (assuming it can be sold on the national political level).

Green buildings are at the forefront of Hansen’s conceptual solution, since they consume 40% of US energy, and much progress has been made (especially in New York!). He thinks codes are necessary “but what will really make a difference is when carbon has a price.” Hansen pointed out how much can still be gained in the building area, as well. It was a welcome spot of good news amongst the depressing news that we have already passed the point of avoiding the effects of climate change altogether.