designer in exile: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

Showing posts with label Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The Oilmen Cometh

There are lies, and there is the big lie. I think I've figured out how they are different.

Last week I was about to be very late getting to a customer's home, due to an embarrassing scheduling oversight at my office. When I asked my boss what to say, he looked at me straight and said "do you not know how to lie?"

I was hesitant, and laughed a bit nervously.

He was serious. "Do you not know how to bend the truth a bit to say stuff like 'traffic was a complete mess,' or 'we had an emergency situation that needed fixing,' or 'we are a little short-handed due to the bug that's going around?'"

I thought about it and replied, "well yes, I suppose so." After all, doesn't everyone do that to some degree?

So at that moment, the reason I was late to the customer's home was because it seemed like there was a big accident on the highway and traffic was really backed up. I wasn't entirely comfortable saying that, but it eased a sticky situation, and nobody was hurt by it.

But then there's the big lie.

The big lie is when somebody misleads a people's entire sense of reality or purpose. It's when a little man behind a curtain cons folks into believing that what they're seeing is the ultimate truth. Throughout history we've seen the big lie used to keep the great majority in fear, and the greedy few in power.

Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled the curtain away from a couple of extremely powerful little men in the oil industry who are seeking to repeal some of the state's landmark environmental achievements.

California Proposition 23, which is a ballot showdown come this November, is a repeal initiative financially sponsored by Tea Party allied oil baron billionaires, the Koch brothers. It aims to dismantle pollution regulations and laws that were enacted to defend the planet from decades of industry abuse. Their reasoning for the repeal? To save jobs.

If that were the truth, then the vast array of small business associations across California surely would be in full step with the repeal.

They are not.

As it turns out, over the past 20-30 years a lot of folks have spent industrious hours researching, testing, and implementing alternative energy business ideas and wondrous new methods of saving energy. Hardworking middle-class Joe the plumber entrepreneurs have planted a green tech economy that is blooming into a new era of American ingenuity. Their work may eventually siphon, sift, and shovel away the filthy, ghastly mess of our fossil fuel world.

The end game? No more BP deep-water drilling disasters, no more Marcellus Shale poison drinking water atrocities, no more Coal River Mountain health tragedies, and most relevant - create an expansive wealth of good, ethical, new jobs.

Contrary to conventional thought, it's been the clean energy business world that has endlessly competed against a heavily government subsidized, tax-dodging, oil industry. Only recently has the US Department of Energy begun to seriously explore and fund clean energy alternatives, and only recently has it looked like green business models might finally succeed, despite the fact that the fossilized dirty fuel dynasties are bankrolled nearly 20-1 by both the federal government and Wall Street compared with clean energy. Oil money comes from a deep, dark well. Now that they feel threatened, their stormtroopers have come in full force to put down the competition, to obliterate our new green world for once and for all.

Image: Wikipedia

Enter Governor Schwarzenegger, the Terminator, a moderate conservative who is bucking the far right Tea Party trending GOP. His rebukes of the oilmen pull no punches. He said at a recent rally that proponents of Prop 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process by using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game, hiding what he said was the real purpose - "self-serving greed."

"They are creating a shell argument that they are doing this to protect jobs," the governor said. "Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts - spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?"

Prop 23 might very well be about jobs. But jobs for whom? The Koch brothers?--D.A. DeMers.

11/10/10 Update - Proposition 23 was soundly defeated by the voters. It's a great victory for green-building design, green jobs, and the environment. Hats off to my colleagues in California.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Paradise Preserved: The Magnificence of Chicago's Botanic Garden

Chicago's greatest urban planner, Daniel Burnham, is famous for saying "make no little plans." And on a recent trip back to the city where I was born and a visit to its world renowned botanic gardens, I realized exactly what he meant.

Located about 20 minutes outside the city, in the north shore suburb of Glencoe, Illinois, the Chicago Botanic Garden is a 385-acre living plant museum situated on nine islands featuring 23 display gardens surrounded by lakes, as well as a prairie and woodlands.

And while Burnham had no connection with its origin, the garden is by no means a "little plan." In fact it is one of the United States' most visited public gardens and a center for learning and scientific research. Each year it has 760,000 visitors. The membership, currently at 50,000, the largest of any U.S. public garden. More than 1,000 volunteers assist with all aspects of the Garden’s mission, from planting and propagating natural areas, to teaching educational programs and staffing public programs and exhibitions. The Chicago Botanic Garden is only one of 10 public gardens accredited by the American Association of Museums, recognizing its living collection of 2.4 million plants.

Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exhibition.

Owned by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society, the Chicago Botanic Garden opened to the public in 1972 and is home to the Joseph Regenstein, Jr. School of the Chicago Botanic Garden, offering a classes in plant science, landscape design and gardening arts. The Center for Teaching and Learning brings information on nature and plants to children, teens and teachers. Horticultural Therapy and Community Gardening provide community outreach and service programs. Through the Institutes of Plant Conservation and Ornamental Plant Research, Garden scientists work on plant conservation, research and environmental initiatives.

Specifically, 200 such scientists address threats to endangered flora, train plant conservation leaders and research plant conservation policy. Programs and research focus on the collection, evaluation, introduction and preservation of plants within the context of threats such as climate change, global warming and human impacts.

In 2007, the Chicago Botanic Garden announced plans for a three-phased initiative that would create a 15-acre science campus located at the south end of the Garden. In 2008, the Garden broke ground for a 38,000-square-foot Plant Conservation Science Center, named for Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice. The Rice Center has a sustainable design, with certification at the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold level.

The Center includes a green roof-top garden, seven research labs, an expanded herbarium, a new seed bank area, new classrooms and seminar rooms, twenty offices for research scientists and a public gallery that allows visitors to see behind-the-scenes conservation science at work. A bridge from Evening Island connects the main garden to this new campus.

Fountain alongside a lake.

Visitors are able to see scientists at work in labs, walk to the green roof top garden, and observe the Tall Grass Prairie millennium seed bank. The Rice Plant Conservation Science Center opened in Fall of 2009.

Likewise, the Chicago Botanic Garden was chosen by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as the sole North American host for World Environment Day 2008 with the theme, "CO2 - Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy."

The English Garden.

Japanese House on the Japanese garden's grounds.

On June 5 of each year the Garden and other venues around the world, highlight resources and initiatives that promote low carbon economies and lifestyles, such as improved energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, forest conservation, and eco-friendly consumption.

Art at the Garden

Over thirty non-profit, academic, cultural and environmental organizations participated in the Knowledge and Action Marketplace on the Garden's Esplanade. Displays and representatives discussed products to help green homes, local carpools, volunteer and community conservation programs, classes on green gardening, the use of CFL light bulbs, vehicles that run on used vegetable oil and even appliances that pop popcorn using solar energy.

Organizations participating in the event included the Center for Neighborhood Technology, offering car-sharing information; CNT Energy, working with ComEd to provide information about Watt Spot, a program to assist homeowners who want to pay market price for electricity. Northern Illinois Energy Project, provided free CFL bulbs. Chicago Wilderness and Openlands, provided information about local conservation and restoration programs and Horrigan Urban Forest Products highlighted the best uses for reclaimed wood from urban trees.

Make no little plans? Indeed!--D.A. DeMers

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Images credits: CBG images by Douglas A. DeMers, free to use under CC license 1.0. Other CBG images via Wikipedia share alike license. Columbian Exhibition image via share alike public domain license.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

LEEDing to a Brighter Future

Wind farm. Image: Wikipedia

"It was like a time bomb went off," Matt Edler said in a recent article in the Inquirer. For 10 years he worked at the Valero oil refinery in Delaware City. In late November the company announced they would close its operation, putting 550 people out of work.

"My grandfather worked there, my father, and I worked there," he said. "We were all doing the best we could to keep the place alive. That's our life."

It was the second refinery shutdown in the region since October, when Sunoco idled its Eagle Point refinery, just opposite South Philadelphia, along the oft murky waters of the Delaware River. The industry is in trouble, not just from the Great Recession, but due to the belief that U.S. gasoline demand will never return to the highs of a few years back.

Oil Refinery. Image: Wikipedia

The displacement of workers is always tragic. And Philly has seen some of the worst of that throughout the ages. We are at a pivotal moment in history, not unlike the discovery of oil itself. Renewable energy and energy conservation industries are emerging rapidly, and jobs based around them are coming into view clear as water - clean water, that is, not the kind from the Delaware River.

Last week Mayor Michael Nutter announced a $1.4 million green jobs training program and a plan to reduce energy consumption in the city's public buildings 30 percent by 2015. The conservation plan includes retrofitting existing structures with updated energy efficient materials and systems, and is designed to be virtually self-funded, in that estimated savings will offset implementation costs and generate revenue for other services like under-funded libraries, schools and related jobs, while simultaneously creating immediate work for contractors in the construction, home-building and related trades.

The funding for jobs training is from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, including $100,000 of which will go to Connection Training Services to develop curriculum, course materials and competency models to meet the needs of employers in green industries, $140,000 to a pre-apprentice program at the Energy Coordinating Agency, and $150,000 to the Carpenters Joint Apprentice Committee to fund a program on green construction practices and procedures.

The Mayor shows no lack of boldness in stating his goal. He declares that Philadelphia will be "the greenest city in America." He says on the city's Greenworks website that "reaching it will be an opportunity to reposition and repurpose Philadelphia as a city of the future.

"For the first time in decades, changes beyond our borders—primarily rising energy prices, but also climate change and an emerging green economy—are increasing the value of our urban assets. Philadelphia’s dense and durable stock of housing, infrastructure and amenities position us to prosper in a carbon-constrained future."

Phila. Mayor Michel Nutter

To enforce such standards the city is utilizing the LEED certification authority. LEED is a third-party certification program and the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. The name is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Its certified auditors, consultants, and contractors are quickly growing to be signature career professionals in the green jobs sector. In fact, even the real estate appraisal industry has caught on to this and is including LEED specification training in portions of the Appraisal Institute's professional practice standards valuation guidance. The worth of a home may no longer simply be location, location, location. A building's heating and cooling system, efficiency rating, and insulation type might also be a factor.

Not all green jobs need be so technical and seemingly inaccessible. Some are traditional careers. Mayor Nutter includes local farmers in the category, brewery workers such as those at the Philadelphia Brewing Company who work with organic and locally grown ingredients, teachers who teach sustainability issues and eco-friendly design - even SEPTA bus drivers are green jobbers, he says, due to their providing public transportation for the city (however infrequent that may be, and when not on strike).

What's most inspiring is to see that young people are getting excited about this bold new world of work. A recent article in the local Star community newspaper titled Building for a Brighter Future describes how a consortium of professional and technical societies and major U.S. corporations such as Bentley Systems Inc., Ford Motor Company and Shell are teaming up with many area schools to boost science, biology, and engineering aptitude for kids.

Secretary-General Speaks at Children's Climate...

Technical assistance classes.

At St. Cecilia School in Fox Chase the task for the seventh and eighth-grade participants and their professional mentors is to design and build a model of a viable city, featuring affordable housing with an emphasis on energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. They must plan the community from the ground up, as if accommodating a mass influx of refugees from a natural disaster, like the New Orleans flood, or a financial emergency, such as the subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis.

The local Philadelphia Sheet Metal Workers Union will host the finals of the regional competition on Saturday. The winner of that event will qualify for the national finals in Washington, D.C. in February.

Come to think of it, there's another category that could be considered a green job - writers who blog about green jobs. --D.A. DeMers.

Images compliments of Zemanta and Creative Commons free share license organization.