Green A City

East Bay Freeway Meltdown: Why Public Transit is the Future

After yesterday's literal meltdown of key freeways serving the San Francisco Bay Area because of a freak gas-tanker explosion,  the focus today is on how the Bay Area's strong public transit system will pick up the slack.

Which begs the question: What does your metro region look like if a similar manmade or natural disaster strikes your freeway system?

There will be free rides on all public transit today, as Gov. Schwarzenegger pitched in $2.5 million in funding to reimburse transit agencies.

The Bay Area has some of the highest public transit ridership rates in the nation, along with metro areas and cities such as New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

But what happens if a key interchange or highway system (New Orleans) is taken out of metro areas with little or no public transit in place? Does the Governor of Indiana make an announcement that all gasoline will be free so the people of Indianapolis can still get to work despite gridlock? Does Arlington, Texas, with zero public transit, just let people stay home from work or school until the problem is fixed?

NYC and Chi Battle for Green City Status

Leave it to New York City to top Chicago after a momentous Earth Day weekend of important events and announcements in both cities. But Mayor Bloomberg did just that in releasing the PlaNYC on Sunday, which laid out a true sustainability map for the future of the nation's largest city, highlighting 127 projects and areas of improvement.

Chicago sponsored its first Green Festival, a party-like event featuring scores of green businesses, non-governmental organizations and more than 300 speakers at the mammoth McCormick Place convention center.

Mayor Daley addressed the Green Festival Saturday and drew a standing ovation from the record crowd when he challenged city residents to do simple things at home to reduce environment impacts such as to plant a tree, turn off water when brushing teeth, and use public transit or walk or bike to replace at least one auto trip per week.

Organizer Kevin Danaher from Global Exchange told me that Windy City attendance on Saturday went way beyond what he and partners Coop America felt comfortable handling, though I heard no complaints from any of those in the massive wonderfully diverse crowd of every race, age and interest. It was the Green Festival's first day in Chicago after being held in San Francisco for many years and Washington DC last fall. SustainLane sponsored the event.

Saturday, I moderated a standing-room only session on "Chicago's journey to become the greenest city in the nation" with a stellar panel consisting of Jacky Grimshaw, VP with Chicago Center for Neighborhood Technology; Jim Slama of Sustain USA, and Sadhu Johnston, Commissioner of the Environment for Chicago.

GreenFest: It's a wrap!

"Great energy!!"
"Tropical weather..."
"Sunshine and people drinking coffee on sidewalks"
    --my coworkers who attended Chicago Green Festival

Guest Post by Ken Ott, SustainLane Government
A Wrap-up of Persephone's Festivities:::

Although I didn't attend GreenFestival, I heard that it was great fun and filled with amazing energy. For instance, as above, spring finally uncorked and everyone buzzed about from the nectar of sweet sunshine! (Which begs the question, where did the commercial honeybees go? Too much sun?!) I'm waiting to hear back from those too tired, asleep, or taking the red-eye back home.

Show highlights as seen from behind a computer screen in SF:

* Mayor Daley opens the show, urges people to be green and has his green cake too!

* TreeHuggers report from behind their green lemonade stands

* EcoRazzi: Jason Mraz Pushes Bamboo T-Shirts, Sara Snow All Smiles

* Green Options' David Anderson weighs in on being tired

* Local: Gapers Block checks off Bumper Stickerisms, with a similar opinion to many, including Sarah and Alex at WorldChanging ("Make this Earth Day your Last") and my housemate "it should be all year, not just one day."

* Local: The Veggie Voice speaks to a green attendee's POV

* Local: Another attendee gets jiggy about massively fun festa

I'll wait for my fellow SustainLane crew members to get much-needed sleep, work the organic caffeinated green drinks out of their systems and post their first-hand impressions soon!! Haru says that Warren really worked it, working the spinning wheel all Sunday, giving presentations and moderating panels both Saturday and today, etc. Richard says that in a restaurant the waiter asked him, Val and Netty if they were part of a club (everyone had the same SustainLane t-shirt on) and they were almost too tired to start replying with "no, we're actually a company. We have this website..." Working an expo, which I've done, is like working in a busy retail store which I've also done, times 10. You have to force yourself to take breaks!

Elsewhere over the weekend:

* Mayor Bloomberg announced NYC Green Transportation Plan

* Churches preached "Creation care"

* Google did its part to educate the masses, using art

Chicago: That Toddlin' Town

Looks like a big Earth Weekend shaping up in Chicago. Green Festival lands there for the first time since taking place for years in San Francisco and after debuting last fall in DC.

Here are some events I'll be attending and appearances I'm making. Hope to see you there if you're in town:

Thursday, April 19: Reading and signing of our new book How Green is Your City? at Barbara's bookstore at UIC (1218 S. Halsted), 7:30 p.m.

Friday, April 20: I'll be discussing How Green is Your City? on WBEZ radio, 91.5 FM (local NPR affiliate): "8:48 Show" airs 9 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Friday afternoon: Wrigley Field. The Cubs. One of greenest teams in the US? Accessible by multi-modal public transit, walking, biking--drivers are discouraged by lack of official parking; the beating heart of the Wrigleyville neighborhood's economy; natural grass and vines, fresh air off the lake. What more can I say? Way to rally, Kurt!

Saturday, April 21: Green Fest opens at McCormick Place. I'll be moderating a panel at 2 p.m. (room e350) on "Chicago's Journey to Become the Greenest City in the Nation" with Sadhu Johnston, Chicago Environmental Commissioner; Jacky Grimshaw, VP of Policy, Transportation and Community Development at the Center for Neighborhood Technology; and Jim Slama, President of Sustain USA.

At 4 pm. in Room 1 at the Green Fest on Saturday other SustainLane folks including Haru Komuro and I will be presenting on "Markets are Conversation" about the convergence of the green market with the internet and applied social networking.

At 5 p.m. and also I think at 3, I will be doing book signings of How Green is Your City? at the New Society Publishers booth.

Funky Buddha Lounge for Green Fest party Saturday night, 728 W. Grand. Yee-hah!

Sunday: More Green Fest: stop by the SustainLane booth to meet our team.

Monday: Brown bag presentation about How Green is Your City? at University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, noon-1:30 p.m., 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago

New York City's Small Carbon Footprint

New York released details of its carbon inventory Friday, and its emissions were just under one percent of the nation's, with about 2.7 percent of the national population of 300 million. That means the city emits only about one-third as much as the rest of the nation does on average, mostly because of its strong city and metro region public transit.

The Big Apple's mixed-use zoning, allowing businesses and residents and retail to occupy the same neighborhoods, also contributed to its low-carbon output, as people have no-carbon options besides public transit--you can actually walk or bike to get things done and to go punch the clock.

The new office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability (what an awesome moniker!) was the agency behind the inventory, and the city worked in conjunction with the organization Local Governments for Sustainability, or ICLEI, in what was described by Mayor Bloomberg as, "the most detailed inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in US history."

I might beg to differ considering the detailed greenhouse gas inventories Seattle and San Francisco have undertaken in the recent past, but it's surely the largest in US history because of the sheer size of NYC.

The inventory will serve as a benchmark for the 30 percent carbon emissions reduction goal by 2030 that Bloomberg announced in December.

Buildings produced 79 percent of the carbon emissions, which underscores the importance of green building measures in combatting global climate change.

Intergov Climate Change Report

The full story is out today from the latest release of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and it aint pretty.

Seems the 2,500 international scientists that have been putting this report together for the past three years, were subject during the wee hours of the morning last night to supposed intimidation from government representatives from China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

China's is the world's other big carbon pollution producer besides the United States, and Saudi Arabia and Russia have future economies tied almost exclusively to fossil fuel production. The charge of the scientists is that these representatives from these nations tried to water down the findings.

Besides stating "with high confidence" that human-caused global climate change is having significant effects on various aquatic and terrestrial global life forms, along with impacting human settlements and individuals, the policymaker summary report offered details such as:

• "The resilience of many ecosystems this century is likely to be exceeded by an unprecedented combination of climate change (and) associated disturbances (such as wildfires, floods, insects, heat waves, etc.)"
• "Coasts are exposed to increasing risks....the most vulnerable industries, settlements and societies are generally those in coastal and river flood plains..."  Take note New York, mid-Atlantic states, California, Hawaii, Florida and the Southeast.
• Warming in Western (North American) mountains is expected to cause decreased snowpack, more winter flooding and reduced summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources." This speaks most urgently to the Northwest, British Columbia, California, and the Southwest, much of which depend on year-round water supplies from melted snowpack.
• "Cities that currently experience heat waves are expected to be further challenged by an increased number, intensity and duration of heat waves during the course of this century with potential for adverse health impacts. The growing population of elderly is most at risk." Remember last summer's record heat wave in LA and the San Francisco area with some all time highs near 120 degrees? Or what about Chicago's 1995 epic heat wave that killed anywhere from 485 to 700 or more, many of them elderly? We must be better prepared for such future incidents through everything from building design and urban planning to energy management and crisis planning.
• "Adaptation will be necessary to address impacts resulting from the warming which is already unavoidable due to past emissions."

It's not all gloom and doom. The summary goes into solutions:

• "Sustainable development can reduce vulnerability to climate change by enhancing adaptive capacity and increasing resilience." Green building, renewable energy, energy efficiency, waste reduction, transit-oriented development, water conservation and increased local food supplies all come to mind.
• "Many impacts can be avoided, reduced or delayed by mitigation."
• "One way of increasing adaptive capacity is introducing consideration of climate change in development planning,  for example, including measures in land-use planning and infrastructure design."

Okay, try to have a great weekend now!

 

The Nicholas Stern Report: Live

Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the British Government's Stern Report on potential global climate change economic impacts, gave a presentation at University of California at Berkeley on Friday evening that implored government policymakers to act to reduce carbon emissions, and put the pressure on the public to urge their leaders to do so above all else.

The former chief economist of the World Bank, Stern is thought of by some economists as a traitor to his class by asserting that government has a responsibility to mitigate future climate change impacts  by addressing "the economics of risk" that climate change represents. (Conspiracy theorists shouting out from the audience, "It's all a hoax!" had to be dragged out.)

Most mainstream economists have tended to dismiss the so-called "externalities" such as pollution or carbon emissions cause from economic activity.

But Stern said, with a one percent worldwide investment in climate change mitigating technologies and development he is confident climate change can be turned back. Without such an "insurance policy," the Stern Report predicted damage to the global economy ranging from 5 to 14 or even 20 percent on an annual basis.

"The cost from deterring climate change impacts are less than the damages," he said. "Ignoring this stuff because it's in the future 30 to 40 years is what I refer to as pure time disruption--discriminating against people by their date of birth. It's like putting half the weight of a life born in 2010 versus one born in 1975."

"If we all wait for Holland to be underwater, it will be far too late to do anything about this." He gave a disturbing vision of a global temperature increase above 5 degrees Fahrenheit causing hordes to migrate en masse from the equatorial regions.

Besides the carbon dioxide-level analysis from the fourth Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change, Stern was clear on the message that reducing carbon can be an economic driver. "I'll put it crudely--you can be green and grow. This will be about doing things differently and continuing to grow."

"California with its 80 percent carbon reduction target by 2050 is in the right place," he told the rapt audience while giving a PowerPoint presentation of black and white text and graphs only, no cute photos.

And he said the world is now experiencing the effects of carbon emissions built up over the past 30 years, mostly from western nations, despite those that argue that all is in vain unless China takes action. "China is reforesting, not deforesting, it has has more fuel-efficient cars, and a five-year plan underway that is aimed at achieving a 20% reduction of energy."

His parting advice to the populace: "(Engaging in) the political process is absolutely fundamental. Eat less meat--that wastes a lot of energy. Insulate your houses better. Use public transit. They have a great new program encouraging free bike use in Paris. Buy carbon offsets."

Additional resources:

• Listen to a forum interview with UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources Professor Dan Kammen, among others, regarding the Stern Report. Nov 2006, KQED Radio.
• Sir Nicholas Stern in the news (Google News search)