“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.

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. Panelist Doug Hocking, Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, emphasizes the importance of using data and sound architectural design to construct truly sustainable buildings.

Thanks to everyone who attended The Building Blocks of Sustainable Ops a couple weeks ago.  The content developed by the speakers was insightful and gave an in-depth look into how they created their Sustainable Management programs.

From deferred maintenance at the City to “constant commissioning” at Hines, the presentations dug deep into the key components of maintaining proper operations, training and education, and awards and recognition plans.  We heard about the need for support at a corporate level and the implications of tenant behavior on building performance.

In addition to the photos in our gallery, watch out for video of the training coming soon. You can view the presentation here and download it here (also available from our website).

Thanks to our speakers for what we felt was a really fantastic series of presentation. We’ve been getting a lot of feedback on the training and welcome more input. Please leave your impressions in the comments to this post.

Finally, if you attended the training and would still like to purchase 3 GBCI Continuing Education Credits, you may do so for $75 here.

Like me, you’ve probably heard the sentiment that however much progress we’ve made on sustainability we are still way behind Europe; much of what we consider advanced is just standard practice over there.

For example, there’s an EU-wide mandate for new buildings to be net zero by 2021. The UK has mandated an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Many of Europe’s building codes are far stricter than our own…and so on.

Virtually all one hears on this subject is anecdotal, or so general that it’s not useful.  Here at Urban Green Council we’ve been asking ourselves for some time how much what we “know” about Europe’s building industry is accurate and what lessons there are for own industry.  Are the progressive measures similar across Europe?  Do they have programs on par with the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan? How do our best buildings (both new and existing) compare with those in Europe? What about the rest of the world, like Canada and Asia? And how much of the differences between these regions are driven by market characteristics like energy prices?

Our September conference, Global Lessons in Green Building: How NYC Stacks Up, will address these questions through two high profile panels.  One will focus on policy and codes, the other on market and finance forces.  We’ve developed the conference hand-in-hand with our partner, ULI New York, and are looking forward to the closing remarks from Clay Nesler of Johnson Controls. It’s our hope that learning about green building in the rest of the world will give us a better understanding of initiatives at home and expand our sense of what’s possible.

Please join us September 19^th.  A cocktail reception will follow the proceedings.

RELATED READING:
Greening the Concrete Jungle (The Economist 9.3.11): America’s cities are confronting climate change. They are also saving money.
Germany Sets Renewable Records (Grist.org 8.31.11): In the first half of 2011, renewables accounted for fully 20.8% of power production.
In Seattle, Work Starts on “Greenest” Office Building (L.A. Times 8.29.11): 1st big office building designed to carry its own environmental weight being built in Seattle, 1 of 12 “living buildings.”
Is This the World’s Greenest Neighborhood? (NRDC: Switchboard 8.24.11): Dockside Green in Victoria, BC was the first applicant for LEED for Neighborhood Development.
Western Grid 2050 (NRDC Switchboard 8.24.11): Provides a Clean Energy Vision & Roadmap for the West’s Economy and Environment

Our June 15th panel discussion, Oppositions: Pennies from Heaven?, was one of the best we have organized here at Urban Green Council.  The moderator and panel had just the right mix of background and perspective to foster a really engaged discussion.  Not everyone agreed about everything, which forced both the panelists and the audience to consider the subject of photovoltaic systems from positions outside their comfort zone.

Laurie Kerr, Senior Policy Advisor at the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, took the role of moderator and started things off with a challenge to the other panelists to justify the expense of PV systems when myriad other technologies could provide similar benefits at a fraction of the cost.  Her prime example was a calculation showing that swapping your incandescent lamps for compact fluorescents was 457 times more cost-effective at reducing your electricity use than installing solar PV. This framed the conversation and placed the onus on solar advocates to justify the expense of these systems while other measures languish.

Each panelist was given five minutes to present; Bill Guiney from Johnson Controls was first.  Bill is a kind of solar thermal hot water guru, having worked on and advocated for these systems for roughly 20 years.  He pointed out that solar thermal is a simple and effective system that for most projects can eliminate the use of electricity, natural gas or other fuel to heat water.  He recognized that many early solar thermal systems lacked rigorous engineering and, as a result, there were many early failures and horror stories.  Today, the solar thermal industry is highly regulated, the systems are extensively engineered, and applications are as reliable and failure-free as any other mechanical system. The systems are not expensive, don’t require particularly specialized labor, and take up so little space that they are applicable even in very dense locations.

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What more could you ask for? A stellar music lineup every week in this Brooklyn venue is the icing on this LEED-certified bowling alley.

Last week, the Emerging Professionals took a behind-the-scenes tour of Brooklyn Bowl to hear firsthand the many facets of its sustainable design from co-owner Charley Ryan.

Charley walked us through the trials and tribulations of becoming the world’s first LEED certified bowling alley.  Starting with the envelope, we were surprised to learn that not only were the original flooring and walls preserved in this former iron foundry but so were the rafters – including the illuminating skylights’ strategic placement.  Where new flooring is concerned, the stage consists of 100% recycled truck tires and the bowling lounge is 100% reclaimed cork.  Even the carnival-themed decor, from the clown bean bags to the shooting gallery birds, was recycled from movie sets.  The materials used throughout the venue aren’t just sustainably-produced or salvaged, they’re local.  The majority of the furniture, fixtures, and building materials were sourced from Brooklyn.  Even the 10 draught beers were brewed here – much of it from their adjacent neighbor Brooklyn Brewery.

Erica peruses a book on their design process while Charley describes the difficulties of sound-proofing the roof.

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On June 17^th we are holding our first full-day workshop on the LEED for Neighborhood Development standard.

Although our organization largely focuses on buildings, we’ve mentioned many times the great importance we feel should be placed on community planning. Where your building is located, and the contextual fabric of that location, is often more important than the design of the building itself.  It has always been clear that choosing a greenfield site over an already urbanized location has major environmental repercussions: from simple disruption of ecology to less efficient utility distribution.  Since climate change has become the most pressing issue of our time, we have come to understand that even just within the limited focus of energy-use there is a clear imperative to curtail sprawl.  The transportation and energy impacts of a building’s location were codified into the metric of “Transportation Intensity” by Alex Wilson in a quietly transformative article at BuildingGreen.com in September of 2007.  Here were the statistics that backed up many of our suspicions that, say, replacing a poorly performing inner-city high-school building with a LEED platinum school 20 miles outside the town was not an unequivocally good thing.

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On June 15th we will hold the next session of our exciting “Oppositions” series: Pennies from Heaven?

Photovoltaics have always been one of the holy grails of the green building movement, and the appeal is easy to understand. Solar power has the allure of something that we might simply plug into our existing system in lieu of dirty fossil fuels. Every aspect of our society is so totally dependent on fossil fuels that we struggle to imagine life without them, and there is a very real desire in our culture to find a technological solution that will simply replace them- some new energy source that we can swap in at the supply end of the equation. But fossil fuels are a one time gift of the planet and it’s entirely possible that we will never find any substitute that has their ease of extraction, portability and use. Fossil fuels are an almost perfect material vehicle for energy- you can pipe or truck them unlimited distances at air temperature and extract their energy with machines as varied as small clay ovens or multi-megawatt cogeneration plants. Replacing them will almost certainly require radical changes to how we think about, and interface with, energy.

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