As the world braces for a tsunami, I’m working to understand this idea of “not being connected” as proposed by a CNN guest. CNN often has so-called ‘subject matter experts (SME)’ to support a given news segment. This morning they played host to a Georgia Tech Assistant Professor of Geology.  CNN’s SME made an academic case for all of the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Japan and now, Chile to be completely unrelated or connected. Really? His opinion got me to thinking about a larger issue affecting our country.

Last I’d checked, we were on one planet and to suggest that what happens on one side of the planet doesn’t affect the other is, in my opinion, elementary. You may as well say that it’s impossible for me to have  stomachache and headache at the same time. When I look at the overall sentiment of our country, I believe we are infected by a condition I call Issueitis – the separation of pressing issues for the benefit of ego. Case in point, yesterday’s political theater of a health care summit. The idea of having a summit on what should be afforded to everyone is beyond me but that’s another issue.

Our inability to see the interrelationship of our most pressing issues prevents us from identifying sustainable solutions thus resulting in endless debate, division and lack of progress. If you were to ask three different people what these recent earthquakes represented, you’d get three different answers. Here’s my take at their responses:

An Apocalyptic: “The Myan prophecies are being fulfilled.”

Religious leader: “God’s telling us something.”

A Geologist: “They’re unrelated.”

What school of thought you believe ultimately rest with what you identify with most. I propose we open our minds to truly understand the world is getting flatter with each passing day, embrace differences and promote solutions instead of division.

I spent this past Saturday hanging out with my brother-in-law Mike and my niece, Olivia. Watching her this weekend made me think of sustainability. Holding my three-month old niece gives me a tangible feel for the future. At one point I was in a room with all of my sisters my neice and my mother, three generations of women.

The eldest born in the 50’s (sorry Mom) and the youngest born in 2009.  Looking at them all I can’t help but think of how much the world has changed over the source of that time-for a little perspective, Dwight Eisenhower was President when my mother was born…her grandchild was born at the beginning of the Obama administration. What amount of change will take place over Olivia’s lifetime? Will we create a sustainable culture in the US in her lifetime? Shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t we make certain hers is a life free from an energy crisis? Free of water shortages and dirty air? Shouldn’t she be able to grow up in a world where she can be anything she wants to be and not be concerned about the ramifications of her actions on the planet…because her way of life is part of a sustainable system and culture?

Olivia and her generation will face a whole host of challenges we can’t even imagine yet. Creating a truly sustainable culture will be the work of generations…but shouldn’t we give her a head start?

The titanic effort of changing our energy policy, land use policy, and indeed our entire economy is overwhelming and daunting. Often though, it is the simple step that can generate significant incremental impacts. Baby steps are a lot easier for the public to grasp on to and adopt as well, thus creating behavioral change and lasting momentum. When viewed in the right lens, individual baby steps can truly be the lever to create lasting change.

The KISS principle – “keep it simple stupid” – is something I need to keep in mind professionally every day as a lawyer. I am forced to boil down legal precedent, complex facts, and apply psychology persuade on a daily basis. If I cannot translate my experience and knowledge into a format that a client can understand, the client will not be able to grasp my advice in making decisions. If I cannot translate the facts, documents and law of a case into a format that a jury understands and agrees with, I will lose my case.

Construction, land use, transportation, and energy policy certainly have their aspects of extreme technical and political complexity. The KISS principle certainly applies here as well, including introducing sustainability as a value into the decision-making processes in these fields. In the context of sustainability, there is another double meaning. The KISS principle can help keep the sustainability conversation focused, productive and manageable and help keep the uninitiated or unmotivated from being overwhelmed. In addition, keeping things simple is where we need to head on a regular, day to day basis to make lasting changes with regards to our economy, energy policy, land use policy and the environment.

I recently saw a blog post with something so simple, so obvious but also carrying such wide implications it resonated with me. The city of Portland has long been a progressive source of environmental thought and advocacy. As reported on the very interesting site GOOD, Portland now has three separate tool libraries. Having spent a lot of money on tools over the years that often sit unused in the garage, this seems like a very obvious and very useful service. While Stanley in particular may not like this concept, overall this is the type of simple step that can create huge ramifications on reducing the intensity of material extraction, energy usage, and reducing our environmental footprint dramatically.

We need to think of the big picture in terms of land use and community planning. We need to foster change in the market towards denser urban and transit oriented development and away from sprawl and McMansions. At the same time, we need to remember that cultivating simplicity and finding structures and mechanisms to encourage that simplicity can also have a tremendous impact.

“There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once upon a time in a land far away…

The last decade is not that far removed to start a fable but one thing is for certain, there were some characters and plots that took shape-for better or worse. What should we expect of the next year, decade? A foundation for the coming years was being laid in the latter part of the decade that hinted we may be seeing an era of personal accountability, corporate responsibility and community engagement. It’s evident in almost every aspect of our lives; from the All-State commercials on responsibility to Subaru contributing apart of every vehicle sale to a charity of your choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNKqffU3Cc

If you’ve read my other blog posts, each is sprinkled with a sense of optimism and cautiousness. I don’t doubt we have what it takes to create a more just, equitable society but am often leery of the human element. Given the right opportunity, visions of sustainability, curbing climate change and any other worthy cause can go out of the window. Take a look at the weeks that followed 9/11. Everyone was patriotic; American flags were on nearly every lawn, car and bumper sticker. At that time, I felt a sense that our States, well, were United. Though quite horrific, those events have fallen into memory and serve as a guidepost that marked a decade. Do we move on or dwell on the past you ask? We move on with the same conviction that together we are stronger than any challenge our nation faces.

As a 30 year old American, this new direction is somewhat of a culture shock. Many in my generation were raised on the premise of “more, more, more” being the standard for success. We believed that having the biggest house, car, bank account and TV signified status or “making it” – I don’t think that will be the case as we move forward. I’m not suggesting we don’t want to be successful in our respective careers but the way we measure success has no doubt changed. In James Bedell’s “Why We Will Save The World”, he noted that “people are the new profit” and that “less is the new more”. I couldn’t agree with James more.

“So goes GM, so goes the country.”

The US automobile industry was pushed to the brink of disaster before an overhaul began. I personally didn’t support the auto bailout or any other federal intervention but was aware that without it, it could have easily tilted our country in another depression-easily. So what of capitalism? I’m not an economist but am of the opinion that the human element trumped reason on this one.

Moving forward our industries must evolve and commit to investing in R&D, infrastructure and education. Watching CBS Sunday Morning’s recent coverage of the last decade showed that the US created 0% jobs (zero) in an entire decade. Our labor market is suffering because we haven’t worked to create new industry domestically and trade policies have effectively shipped American ingenuity abroad for production and redistribution back to us.

With a defunct energy policy, declining dollar, lackluster labor and housing markets, the push is now toward sustainability, efficiency, buying local and community engagement. What happens when our GDP is growing, our communities are stable, CO2 emissions decrease and rail becomes a viable transportation alternative in the states? If our economy is to grow, history shows us that we’ll need innovation to push the limits of what we can accomplish. As those innovations come to market, legislation will be slow to understand the affects they’ll have on the public long after fortunes have been made and fortunes lost, hence the financial crisis.

I advocate growth, change, prosperity and hope. However, I’m well aware that what goes up must come down. America will recover. We will prosper again and again, we will become complacent.

I look to the past for clues and I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll get it.

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Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

Health is one of the most wished for gifts during the holiday season, both for ourselves and others. It’s often accompanied by the wishes for prosperity and happiness, but health, it’s the one thing that in many ways influences the realization of those other two wishes. Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula that if we all just applied would ensure optimal health for everyone. There’s just too many variables; genetic differences, behavioral variations (such as physical activity and dietary habits), physical handicaps, emotional dispositions, economic irregularities, cultural tendencies, and environmental conditions.

On the other hand, our efforts to grant that wish of optimal human health to everyone is happening on some level in each of these areas. It’s happening through research at the smallest coded level of our DNA, through the expanding fields of human behavioral science, through technological inventiveness that compensates for failed or damaged human parts and processes, through political and social reforms policies, and through environmental remediation and protection efforts. But, what about our cities, our buildings, the places we live, work, play, and rest? Sure, we’ve seen advances in sustainable materials and construction processes, and there’s little criticism found in using these when it comes to creating healthier indoor air quality and reducing the amount of raw material and energy necessary for their production. Advances such as these only have a passive impact on our health though.

Not everyone though thinks this is an acceptable limitation of our built environment. Architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins have been preaching, and practicing, a radical and controversial theory that our buildings and cities should not only optimize human health, but they should also strive to make dying a thing of the past! That’s right, if Arakawa and Gins had their way with architecture – and ultimately its influence on mankind – you and I wouldn’t have to die.

Interior, Bioscleave House, Arakawa & Gins

Arakawa and Gins have built a body of work – books, buildings, paintings, and poetry – on the conviction that it is “illogical (and arguably unethical) for an ethical system that values life not to see mortality as fundamentally unethical.” Building on this, Arakawa and Gins propose that our buildings should be of an architecture of “precision and unending invention” that “function as well-tooled works of equipment that help the body organize its thoughts and actions to a greater degree than had previously been thought possible.”  For more in-depth reading on their thoughts about architecture and the human condition, go here (it’s far too much to include in this post).

Interior, Bioscleave House, Arakawa & Gins

Rather than dismiss Arakawa and Gins on what may be considered a hyperbolic proposal, it seems more valuable to challenge our established assumptions in light of their provocative call to arms against death through the use of architecture. In doing so, the way that we imagine, design, build, and use buildings could shift the relationship with our built environment from one that simply facilitates and shelters our activities toward one that actively works with us to improve and extend, but perhaps not indefinitely (who knows, though), our health and well being.

The provocation put forth by Arakawa and Gins isn’t without its share of supporting science, although be it indirectly. For example, scientists are studying how social activities in animals and insects influence brain structure. Discovering which social and environmental factors favor development in certain regions of our own brains could have radical implications for how we then spatially structure and design our environment. Research into people suffering from Alzheimer’s consistently points to increased physical activity in delaying and preventing cognitive degeneration. One study involving lab rodents demonstrated that Environmental Enrichment (EE) promotes structural and functional changes in the brain, including enhanced learning and memory performance. Another study using adult primates living in standard laboratory housing experienced structural and biochemical changes in brain regions important for cognition.

An environmental enriched room for marmoset monkeys, source.

Can we begin to examine the relationship between our own physiology and built environment through the findings in such studies? Might we begin to imagine our buildings, even our cities, as opportunities for environmental enrichment, and therefor as instruments for structuring human physiology? What we design and build does influence our very being. Architecture could then assume an integral role in improving and extending our health and well-being be?

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Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

Don’t own a car, but want to get out to one of the Bay Area’s hundreds of parks and trails? Or perhaps, you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint and wondering how to get to your favorite hike without using your car?

Transit and Trails is a new resource for outdoor enthusiasts who want to leave their cars behind and easily get information on how to take the bus (or ferry) to reach Bay Area hiking trails and campgrounds.

A project of the Bay Area Open Space Council (BAOSC), the new interactive website identifies hundreds of trailheads and 150 campgrounds to explore across the Bay Area’s 1.2 million acres of preserved lands. Just enter your starting location, and roughly how far you want to venture, and the site suggests possible hikes and featured trips. Once you decide where you want to go, it connects with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s 511 Transit Trip Planner to provide a detailed trip itinerary, complete with a map, transit times, fares and walking directions to and from the transit stop.

BAOSC a collaborative of more than 55 member organizations actively involved in permanently protecting and stewarding important parks, trails and agricultural lands in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. They are committed to connecting people to the land.

According to Bettina Ring, Executive Director of the BAOSC, “Transit and Trails is the first ever trip planner focused on parks and trails…It brings all the needed information to your fingertips so you can easily plan your outing.”

The ROI of Not Driving

The site also calculates the cost of driving to your destination and estimates the pounds of carbon you would save by using public transit, so you can calculate the ROI of leaving the car at home.

Wouldn’t this make a great iphone application?

Transit and Trails makes it easy for you to access all the amazing parks and open spaces in the Bay Area while minimizing costs (save on tolls, gas and parking) and reducing your carbon footprint. Give it a try!  Since I live in Marin and can reach many trails from my front door (or if I need to travel, I have the dog along)  I have not tried the service yet.

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Deborah Fleischer is founder and president of Green Impact. She is a LEED AP with a Master in Environmental Studies from Yale University and over 20-years of direct experience working on sustainability-related challenges in both the public and private sectors. You can follow her at @GreenImpact.

by Andre Blackman

It is fairly understood that staying active goes a long way in reducing obesity and related diseases (diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc.) as well as the emotional benefits of staying physically fit. As much as public health studies have shown the impact of simple movement, such as walking, to greatly improve health – sometimes there are other barriers to getting this done than just “get up and move”. The environment in which people live is constantly linked to important statistics such as life expectancy

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss health journalism and the impact of new media on the field. While getting insight and thoughts from a great group of health/medical bloggers, a story came up that highlighted the difference a group of people can make in their community. An inspirational story that once again shows the need for individual and group effectiveness in changing public health landscapes.

Three years ago, a group of moms who decided to begin walking in their community, were met with several barriers to a safe and enjoyable atmosphere. This included aggressive pets and physically unsafe walking conditions. This is not uncommon in areas that are close to or inside of cities. An individual might have just given up and decided not to walk in that area – but the collective thoughts of these determined mothers gave way to action.

Through unified efforts to bring other community members, police, parks & recreation officials and other urban planning entities into their frustration (and more importantly solutions) – the Greenfield Walking Group were catalysts to change in their environment. This course of action has led to “walkability” improvement measures in other communities.

From the article:

In Stiern Park, the broken lights have been replaced, graffiti and dogs removed. Police surveillance and maintenance efforts have increased. And now the members of the walking group have learned the numbers to call and people to talk to if further problems arise.

To me, this story of change makes it even clearer that in order for positive public health changes to happen in communities, there needs to be a sense of urgency and benefit instilled in the minds of the people.

Local. Impact.

David Holmgren's Permaculture Flower

If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking of a community that is merely human. We are talking about a neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil, its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it. What is more, it is only if this whole community is healthy…[and] the human economy is in practical harmony with the nature of the place, that its members can remain healthy and be healthy in body and mind and live in a sustainable manner. ~ Wendell Berry

According to permie.net:

Permaculture is the design practice of creating truly sustainable human settlements that mimic, honor, and cooperate with natural ecosystems.

A city is both an organism and an ecosystem. Its elements are intertwined and overlapping. Yet, most cities are dysfunctional in terms of operating like a healthy ecosystem or closed-loop system.

The way modern cities are set up, it takes many outside resources to keep them functioning. Our food is trucked in, our goods are trucked in (or flown or shipped in), our water is piped in from external reservoirs. And in turn, many resources we produce, mainly in terms of what we call “trash” or “pollution” are carted off or washed away with the rain. Our food scraps and material trash are sent to landfills way outside of the city. Our sewage is flushed to sea; rainwater flushes sewage and chemicals into the ocean.

This is the height of inefficiency and dysfunction. Why can’t we utilize the resources we have in our cities? Why are we throwing them away?

One easy answer is, it’s just the way it is. It’s how our cities have been set up and there are various barriers to change the way things are done. But I won’t get into the bureaucratic problems or political barriers. I’m here to talk about solutions to the tangible stuff. In many cases, one solution will handle many problems. And as permaculturists (aka, permies) like to say, The Problem Is The Solution. Here are some examples.

Problems #1:

• Toxic soil
• Poor air quality (non-compliance with the Clean Air Act)
• Greenhouse gas emissions (climate change)
• High populations suffering from asthma, obesity, diabetes
• Dependence on outside resources for food
• No place to bury waste (no landfill space)
• Rats

Solution #1: Composting & Food Production

Food scraps are perhaps the number one wasted resource of big cities. Composting food scraps (mixed with leaf litter, paper, tree trimmings  and other carbon) will provide nutrient rich soil. Nutrient rich soil has the power to remediate toxic soil. Nutrient rich soil has the power to grow food.

If we don’t truck out our food scraps and instead remediate our soils and grow our own food then we’ll have eliminated the need to truck in food as well. Fewer trucks in and out means fewer emissions polluting the air, which means reduced asthma triggers. If we’re growing nutrient dense food in the city, our people will be eating healthier and reducing their risk for diabetes and obesity.

The Fort Mason Community Garden in San Francisco. Credit: Briggs Nisbet, The Architect's Newspaper

Food scraps, when put in a landfill, release the powerful greenhouse gas, methane. Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon. If we compost our food scraps and other wastes, there will not just be less to bury in a landfill, there will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Oh yeah, the rats. If we’re not putting our food scraps on the curb and instead properly mixing them with carbon (trees, leaves, etc.) to create compost, we won’t be tempting our little four-legged friends with midnight curbside snacks.

Problems #2:

• Combined sewer overflow (CSO)
• Dependence on external water resources (reservoirs)
• Polluted waters (non-compliance with the Clean Water Act)
• Urban heat island effect
• Extreme energy demand in summer (air-conditioning)
• Thirsty street trees
• Nature deficit disorder

Solution #2: Hold onto the Rain

The urban environment – paved over, filled in, built upon. Concrete and asphalt are ubiquitous, and are not permeable surfaces. Water rolls off of them, picking up whatever particulates happen to be lying around – lead, mercury, petrochemicals, trash. This polluted water finds its way to the river, to the ocean.

The way our sewers were set up, combining raw sewage with stormwater run-off, well, you can imagine this toxic mire just floating into our waterways every time it rains. As little as 5/8 of an inch of rain is enough to set up a combined sewer overflow (CSO) event in New York City.

In this paved-over place, any semblance of plant life grows in the cracks and crevices in between hardscape, in abandoned lots or abandoned buildings. (A good example of this was the High Line, before it became a park.) This plant life has the power to hold onto the water and store it, preventing the stormwater run-off that pollutes the water.

If we let things be, natural succession of plant life will take place, albeit slowly. But if we speed succession, green will return, which will both keep rainwater on site and invite wildlife back.

There are several ways to approach this, a combination of which can solve the problem. Here are some impactful approaches to increasing water-absorbing potential:

• Plant and care for street trees (and give them bigger tree beds, where possible)
• Install and care for green roofs
• Create more rain gardens
• Start more and tend existing community gardens
• Break up parking lots and other underutilized hard surfaces to create riparian buffer zones

In planting more, gardening more, we will reduce the hardscape and increase the natural green landscape which in turn reduces urban heat island effect, stormwater run-off (and CSOs, polluted water), the need for excessive air conditioning. And we’ll also have the psychological benefits that greenery brings (Please see this wonderful document, Restorative Commons: Creating Health and Well-being Through Urban Landscapes for more on the subject).

Another way to hold the water in the city is through rainwater harvesting. There are some fairly simple systems for rainwater harvesting which can be used to water street trees, gardens, urban yards, and urban farms. In many places – such as Singapore, Japan, and Germany – rainwater is now being used for general residential use. Perhaps someday we will use rainwater to feed our showers and laundry machines in big modern cities as well, which would reduce our dependence on external reservoir systems.

Permaculture Links:

• Permaculture Activist
• Permaculture Institute
• Permaculture Principles
• Urban Permaculture Guild

How would you like to see your city redesigned?

by James Bedell

Photo, Flickr

As one of the founders and leaders of Build2Sustain I am constantly trying to advocate for the business case for green building renovation. I do this for two reasons, the first, because I believe in it. Efficiency is at the heart of good capitalism and we need our built spaces to be more efficient to compete. I also make the argument because, frankly, I think it’s the one people outside of the “green” movement will listen to. It’s hard sometimes to make the argument about stopping climate change; it’s easier to defend someone’s wallet. But I want to make something clear, there is a moral imperative for every building to be a green building. Here’s the bottom line: there are a limited number of resources on this planet and as the population grows we know that we’ll need to be smarter about how we use those resources.

It’s so easy to look at SUVs and make them the target of our environmental ire. It also gives people a simple point of attack. Celebrities drop their Hummers and get Teslas and all the sudden everything is right with the world. I wonder if their home is as efficient as their car? The buildings we live and work in are responsible for half of the green house gas emissions in the world. They are also responsible for roughly the same percentage of our energy usage. We focus intently on transportation because we feel like we can engineer our way to a solution and maybe we can, but our houses, our offices, and our malls are just as much to blame and represent a lot more work.

Our buildings can be healthier places that disturb the natural environment less and actually contribute energy to the grid instead of only pull from it. We can actually remake our building stock into a net positive for the planet if we have the will. Where do we find that will? Imagine a tomorrow where our kids don’t pay electric bills. Where our water supply is constantly recycled. Where our cars are powered by electricity pulled from our homes. A world where we don’t have to worry about air quality because of burning coal to power our offices. Imagine built spaces that make us healthier. That’s the future we can provide for our children, if we only work for it. Don’t we owe that to them?

Guest Contribution By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact

The 20th Bioneers, a three day conference celebrating breakthrough sustainability solutions, kicked off on last Friday in Marin. The agenda is chock full of speakers on a wide range of topics, from the arts, indigenous knowledge and restoring our ecosystems to youth and women’s leadership.

I was excited to hear Michael Pollan speak, a leading critic of our industrial food system and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire (you can listen to his talk here). For those of you who aren’t attending, you can catch some of the keynotes via live webcast.

Strolled On Stage With a Burger

He strolled onto the stage to present a keynote on the growing national movement to redesign the food system with a McDonalds takeout bag in his hands and proceeded to unpack a double quarter-pounder with cheese.

The gist of his message:  the food system is broken and we can’t address the important national issues of health care, climate change and energy independence without address the food system, which contributes up to 33 percent of our carbon footprint.

He illustrated his point by asking the audience to guess,

How much oil are we eating?

Next to the burger, he began to pour oil from a bottle into small glasses.  He filled the first glass, then the second, then the third and needed a fourth to hold the 26 ounces of oil it takes to make a conventional burger. “A disgusting way to eat,” he commented as he licked his oil laden fingers. As the audience moaned, he confessed it was actually chocolate syrup!

For each hamburger made, thirteen pounds of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere, the equivalent of driving 13 miles, in part from the fertilizers needed to grow the corn and soy that farm raised cows eat and the pesticides used on these crops.

And while of course we are not directly eating this oil, as a nation we are eating way too much junk food. According to Pollan, $500 billion of our annual health costs are linked to diet.

Articulating a Framework

He spent the remainder of his time articulating an overarching framework for weaning the American food system off of fossil fuels.  While it is difficult to do his eloquent talk justice in a few bullet points, here are a few key points of the framework:

• Farms:  We need to start providing farmers incentives to diversify their crops and we need more farmers.
• Marketplace: There is a need to create more local foodsheds and rebuild distribution.
• Edible Education: We need to teach kids to grow food, cook food  and take time for lunch in schools.

Then They Fight You

In his opening remarks he stressed we have come a long way in the past few years, but still have a long way to go.  And he concluded by reminding the audience not to underestimate the level of pushback we are going to see from industry. He called up Gandhi’s wisdom on the steps of a revolution,

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Gandhi

For some details on how the industry is fighting back, see BC Upham’s post from last week.

To Learn More

PBS just launched a beautiful web site on the Botany of Desire with lots of great information and resources. Mark your calendar for the October 28th, 8pm to watch their 2-hour documentary.

And for readers interested in how to bring some of these concepts alive in food service contracts, check out The Low Carbon Diet, a program offered by Bon Appétit Management Company.  According to Bon Appétit, “The typical American diet consisting of a high percentage of red meat may contribute more to global warming than driving a typical sedan.”

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Deborah Fleischer is founder and president of Green Impact, a strategic environmental consulting practice that helps companies strengthen their relationships with stakeholders, develop profitable green initiatives and communicate their successes and challenges. She is a LEED AP with a Master in Environmental Studies from Yale University and over 20-years of direct experience working on sustainability-related challenges in both the public and private sectors. She brings deep expertise in sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, program development and written communications. You can follow her on Twitter @GreenImpact.