Green A City

Ignoring Climate Change Will Damage World Economic Growth: Stern Report

Climate change presents a potential whopping 5% per capita cost to the future world economy, according to a report released today by the former chief economist from the World Bank, Nicholas Stern. The first substantial macro-economic study to forecast economic costs of global climate change, the study monetarily quantifies major flooding in cities including New York, Miami, London, Tokyo, Shanghai and Buenos Aires, among other climate-change related threats.

Though the US currently produces 25 percent of global greenhouse gases, the real policy actions to address these dire issues are currently being taken on the state and local level. Federal programs to limit US greenhouse emissions are minimal while spending on energy research is less than half of what it was in 1979 (when taking into account adjusted dollars), according to a story in today's New York Times.

It's US leaders in state and local government that are taking concrete actions in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At www.sustainlane.us, we launched this month an open-source knowledge base for these officials to share best practices.

Not only have we received excellent best practices in climate change policy from local government in Seattle, San Francisco, and Marin County, California, SustainLane Government's knowledge base has also benefited from contributions that address global climate change in related areas such as Energy/ Energy Efficiency, land use/planning, transportation, even in local food and agriculture.

Whether it's Denver or Portland replacing their traffic light bulbs with energy saving LEDs, or Washington, DC offering tax breaks for hybrid vehicle owners, or Chicago expediting green building permitting, local government is taking a wide range of actions that will benefit local constituents while stimulating the domestic economy, AND will cut US greenhouse gas emissions.

The Stern Report also praised states, particularly California under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's leadership, which are taking the lead in establishing frameworks for greenhouse gas reduction goals and carbon caps. SustainLane Government is readying its knowledge base for the participation of states in best-practice sharing and peer networking.

While the Stern Report is a bracing call to action, the report stresses that measures taken to reduce carbon emission now will have major long-term positive economic impact. Last century, the United States was a leader in confronting the challenges of the day with long-lasting solutions through the use of programs, policies and actions.

The difference this century is that such innovation is coming from our communities, our own backyards, if you will. I will be sharing exciting announcements in the coming months about SustainLane partnerships and collaborations with a variety of state and local government entities that are taking on the enormity of global climate change and other large-scale sustainability issues, while improving local living and building our economy for the future. 

SustainLane Government's Full Debut

SustainLane Government blasted off this week, giving state and local government officials a way to share their sustainability best practices and networks. With the full site up on Monday, so far more than 60 US cities, counties or states have registered to be part of the action.

Government officials coming to the free site have contributed about 30 best practices, with more in the pipeline.

Published entries range from a four-page overview of Denver International Airport's ISO 14001 registered Environmental Management System, the first such airport in the nation, to San Francisco's 170-page detailed engineering and planning report on transitioning the city's utilities from grid-based dirty fossil fuels to renewables and other cleaner distributed energy sources. 

When I demoed the site at the University of Pennsylvania's "Growing Greener Cities" event earlier this week, the reaction was inspiring. People said they get it and they need a way to speed up their research. They also need to find a better way to "collaborate or die," as they say in the Silicon Valley.

SustainLane sees what we are calling "applied social networking" as a powerful force in the next wave of the internet. We think the net can be harnessed as a strategic tool through powerful social networks that work together simultaneously online and face-to-face to solve the world's most vexing problems.

Time to start integrating expertise and professional networks into a powerful economic and design force that will address the burning issues of the day: global climate change, economic competitiveness, energy and food security and domestic job creation.

Shout outs to the best global sustainability blog out there, worldchanging , and to Nick Astor's always-on TriplePundit for their coverage of SustainLane Government. 

Oh yeah, the blog name will have to change to reflect our cast of the net to include states and other local government besides cities. Other writers will be showing up here, too.

NYC Goes Green Big Time

The announcement late last month by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the city was establishing a big time sustainability office is noteworthy for the effect it should have on all U.S. city sustainability efforts.

New York is the first American city to treat sustainability as an integrated management role and operational function across city government. To date no U.S. city has accomplished "baking-in" sustainability management into city operations.

Even in the most successful so-called Green cities, the sustainability function has been buried on city org charts, creating a siloed approach that limits effectiveness across city planning and operations. San Francisco's and Chicago's Department of the Environment and Portland's Office of Sustainable Development have all been trying to break out of this mold over the past year or so, but in terms of actual power, this has been a vexing limitation from the beginning.

Other city's sustainability functions reside directly in the mayor's office in cities such as Seattle and Denver, an arrangement that has proven successful with small staffs and some major city initiatives (Seattle Mayor Nickels' Climate Action Plan and Denver Mayor Hickenlooper's Greenprint Denver). But what happens when the mayoral sponsors of these offices leave office?

So it is with great excitement for me that Mayor Bloomberg finally gave a glimpse into NYC's new Office of Long Term Planning and Operations. The name alone shows that the city is looking far beyond command-and-control issues like recycling and illegal dumping that preoccupy so many city environmental officials.

The position will be part of the Mayor's Office of Operations, and it is headed by a young former McKinsey Consultant, Rohit Aggarwala. Aggarwala was also formerly in charge of long-term planning for the Transportation Review Board of the National Academies, which advises the federal government on transportation policy.

Besides long-term land use and transportation planning, the new office will be taking on environmentally preferable purchasing for the city's countless department's and 300,000 employees. Clean transportation will also be a focus for the city's fleet of 30,000 vehicles.

Members of the new office's advisory board includes a cross-section of business, environment and development honchos: leading green real estate developer Daniel Tishman, CEO of Tishman Construction Corp., Ashtok Gupta of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Marcia Bystryn, executive director of the New York League of Conservation Voters.

What the new office will accomplish remains to be seen. Besides a sustainability plan--which is one of its first stated orders of business--the city lacks substantial green building and renewable energy mandates and goals. The city could also use a clean tech incubator focusing on helping create hometown innovation and economic growth in everything from clean energy to advanced material and transportation engineering.

But for now, kudos to Mayor Bloomberg.