Cities' Green Building Catching On

Our hearts go out to the people living in cities hit by the devastation in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the scene of record-breaking rain and massive floods is becoming all too common. This spring ranked in the top 10 wettest ever recorded. We are seeing the face of global warming with growing frequency, a scenario that scientists have been warning us about for three decades.

But there's hope in the aftermath of disaster too. After suffering a devastating tornado last year, Greensboro, Kansas is rebuilding green and sustainable so there can be a brighter future for their town (check out the town's efforts in a new series on Planet Green).

So this week our shout-out goes to American cities for taking the initiative to think green! For those rebuilding green after the devastation of extreme weather and those who are looking for ways to protect their city's future by going green - we salute you. Cities have taken bold steps to do their part while improving the quality of life in their communities.

A perfect example is Chicago. Green roofs, great recycling and sustainability programs, and last year's Cool Globes outdoor art exhibit are just a few of the Windy City's recent greening efforts. Little known fact: Chicago has more alleys than any other city in the country - a whopping 2,000 miles of alleys - all lined with the pavement equivalent of five midsize airports. So some clever Chicagoan came up with the idea to retrofit them. The city will rip up the old concrete and replace it with environmentally sustainable road building materials that will allow water to penetrate the soil through the alley surface itself. That means rainwater will recharge the underground water table instead of ending up as polluted runoff flowing into rivers and streams. What a perfect example of rethinking old ways!

Another city taking action is Minneapolis. The city recently approved an ordinance that will limit idling in the city to three minutes, except in traffic. Cutting down on idling is one easy thing that everyone can do, and while we hope that the ordinance will be pushed to 30 seconds, we think it is a great step in the right direction and hope other cities will follow suit!

Kudos to Mayor Michael Bloomberg for experimenting with the Summer Streets program in New York City this summer. On three Saturdays during the month of August, all vehicles will be banned along a 6.9 mile route in an effort to promote walking, cycling and mass transit use among Gotham City's visitors and residents.

Three cheers to the beautiful city of Denver and Mayor John Hickenlooper who is hosting the Green Frontier Fest on August 24, the day before the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Green Frontier Fest will be a celebration of everyday positive choices that individuals, families and organizations can make now to address global warming. The Fest will also include a special presentation by green jobs advocate Van Jones. Go Denver!

When the federal government doesn't act, it's the cities and states that can lead the way. What's your hometown doing?

My favorite action tip for the week is to stop idling. On average, a car will burn more than half a gallon of fuel for every hour spent idling. In general, 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting the car, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Signing off from the Green Zone,

Laurie David

Comments

[KillTheMessenger]

The "greenest buildings" are 20 story towers with 200 apartments. They use the least amount of energy per household, require the smallest footprint and produce cities with population densities so high that everything a person needs is practically within walking distance. Public transportation in these cities is profitable and highly sustainable. A good model for development like this is Singapore.

As long as the US builds single family homes as the main residences, it will not solve its energy and transportation problems.

[UnbiasView]

Public transportation is profitable in no cities, please show me your link on what cities are even breaking even on any public transportation.

BTW, why the heck do liberals care where people live? Apartments suck, living in the city is not for everyone.

[HBeachbum]

When your and Al Gore's carbon footprints gets as low as the average person's, then, maybe I'll listen to what you have to say.

[KillTheMessenger]

It is sad to see so many people who never graduate from kindergarten.

[sheila]

Laurie, thanks for pushing solutions. I hope you will join with me, a few of the other posters on this thread, and millions of other people who actually understand how renewable power works, and who are installing solar PV (and thermal) and/or mini-wind at point of use. The urgency is with setting policy that will make certain that LOCAL, POINT OF USE systems are installed, and REMOTE, WILDERNESS-KILLING power plants and lines are not.

If anyone is still back in 1979 on the economics or tech of rooftop PV, please check out this article, showing that Germany's success (500,000 systems so far! 1.1 GW in 07, and 40% more this year!) is because it PAYS ratepayers a good price for 100% of the power they produce. This is essential to getting wide adoption of rooftop here in the US, but Big Energy has so far blocked it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/16/renewableenergy.energy

if anyone still thinks "if it says "solar," it must be "green," start paying attention to the total, permanent million-plus acre losses of our beloved Mojave desert which are starting to happen thanks to wasteful, unneeded "solar farms" and "wind farms." One can hardly claim to be saving the planet while actively destroying vital ecosystems, but people are still cheerleading these projects, even in the face of the massive harm they will do.

this is the answer, no matter what we believe about global warming...

[alvdh1]

HuffPost's Pick

I live in St. Louis which is home to two mega sized coal fired power plants which are fed with 300 railcars of coal per day per power plant. In your analysis this stuff must just show up from nowhere without impact to the environment and burned mysteriously without issuing a plume of smoke. In fact, Appalachia and countless other pristine areas of America are being decimated by strip mining and mountain top blasting to access this foul atmosphere destroying fossil fuel.

In the 1970's, the EPA put radioactive tracers in the plume of the Ameren/UE Labidie coal fired power plant 40 miles west of downtown St. Louis. The plume was traced to Detroit, Michigan over 600 miles away before it began to disipate. This is a continuous plume that belches into the atmosphere 24/7, 365 days per year.

The alternative would be to create legislation that would encourage homeowners and business to install solar cells and wind turbines on existing and new structures. The legislation would create regional Independent Service Operators who would pay any producer of clean power market electric rates for excess production. This would enable land already consumed to be utilized for energy production, reduce transmission losses in the grid because more power would be used where it is produced and require very few government subsidies because people would insall solar and wind power more readily if they knew they were going to get paid market rates for their excess capacity.

[sheila]

in my analysis, we would have local, point of use PV, thermal and wind on existing and new structures, and feed-in tariffs for the people who own them, rather than building out our wilderness for renewable power (or obviously for other power) to benefit Big Energy.

did you read my post and/or the article i link to? that i'm opposed to coal is so obvious, i didn't think anyone could really miss that, but i guess you gotta spell everything out in 250 words or less around here?

what i'm ALSO opposed to is the greenwashing of the environmental devastation that gigantic solar and wind "farms" create - and to point out that not only is it unnecessary, but it's a far, far inferior solution to local, privately-owned, grid-tied systems. there doesn't have to be a "belch" of visible smoke for something to annihilate an ecosystem. the amount of groundwater wasted, species slaughtered, heat and light concentrations, permeability destroyed, viewsheds and pristine habitats obliterated are mind-boggling with Big Solar (and to a lesser degree, wind). Over a MILLION acres of Mojave are under the rapacious eye of Big Energy, which is 90% as bad as Appalachia + Belch. i, for one, won't settle for that kind of loss for that little gain, especially since it also rips us off economically, and there is NOTHING that guarantees the decommissioning of a single coal plant, no matter how many solar plants they build.

you'll like the article.

[UnbiasView]

Solar and wind aren't efficient or cheap, that is why they must be subsidized yearly.

[susanb2010]

I'm proud to work for Swinerton Builders in San Francisco who were named the first ever Green Builder of the Year by the San Francisco Business Times!

[belladawna]

quote"What's your hometown doing?"... n-o-t-h-i-n-g. period. so much for mass and their enviro-friendly selves.... i've written a few comments but my files seem to be getting deleted every time i make a flippin' post on here. this is starting to make me wonder what in the world is the problem with people making a choice to DO something for the environment, and to stop global warming while informing the public about change....... what is their collective problem with that, i bet laurie(besides myself) would have a real sweet answer for those people....... haha also, maybe i should scrap the forensic science criminal aspect and go for the environmental forensics eh...... wonder who or where to send my resume to....... lol yeah, i'm thinking a change would do some people in some places some real good including myself.

[clevelandchick]

Not that I expect someone from LA or New York to pay much attention to Cleveland, but right now we are one of the top cities in number of USGBC LEED projects including a redevelopment of the old industrial flats being one of the very first LEED ND project aka a Green Neighborhood. Also all Ohio schools are required me meet a minimum LEED rating of Silver.

http://grist.org/feature/2008/05/15/cleveland/

I belong to two groups in Cleveland dedicated not just to Green Building but building green business: The Cleveland Green Building Coalition (www.clevelandgbc.org) and Entrepeneurs For Sustainability (www.e4s.org).

So Laurie, if you really want to see a city embracing Green, come to the city whose river once burned.

[UnbiasView]

I take care of the Northeast territory for my job and Cleveland is probably the worst city that I travel to with Newark being a close 2nd.

[Hattie]

We put solar hot water in years ago and photovoltaics one year ago. Our energy bill, including gas for our one infrequently used car, plus propane for cooking, is $60.00 a month.

[UnbiasView]

What was it before?

[gotborked]

Here's a tip to those trying to capitalize on the fad of appearing "green": the greenest remodel is no remodel.

[GoGreen]

I understand the point you are trying to make but I think she clearly made reference to rebuilding necessitated by the massive flooding in the Midwest.

[Annette]

Maybe-maybe not. You can improve your "green footprint". Install a more efficient heating system,a solar water heating system,solar electricity system, better insulation. You must take seriously what happens to anything you discard, new purposing is important. Just taking things to the dump is not a good idea. If you improve your efficiency enough to offset the cost of transporting and manufacturing the new products it can certainly be a green remodel.

Putting in granit countertops and shiny appliances, no that isn't green. Cutting your energy usage is.

[jgsuperpants]

You're also missing the point. When a home or building uses old, inefficient materials, it creates much more waste than a remodel. So, the fact is, a remodel done the correct way, along with recycling and properly disposing of the old materials is greener than leaving an antiquated system alone. Granted, using new materials - any new materials - is energy intensive, a proper remodel now will reduce the energy use in a facility and will prevent the need for changes later.

[kingcityguru]

Hey, how about instead of worrying about idling you push for nuclear energy to generate the electricity needed for a mandate that all cars be electrical in 15 years. It is CO2 and air pollution free which should get both the globalwarminmongers and not on your side. It also has the added benefit of being Mid-East free as a huge majority of the world's uranium is found in Canada, the US, and Australia.

[kingcityguru]

I would suggest you focus on the REAL economic argument if you want people to switch: if it is ecomincal to go to solar, for example, then people will do so. If it is not, they won't move to it or anything else. While you rich Libs can afford high gas prices and the like, most cannot so a carbon tax is really a bad thing for most people even if there are tax set-offs.

I, myself, have installed solar panels from Day4Energy (dot com) because they gave me the most energy per square foot and dollar spent. To me it was economical and will pay for itself in a relatively short period of time thereby allowing me to tell the globalwarminmongers that I did it because I like clean air and money saved and not because of the fraud of global warming.

Try the carrot approach and leave the stick for Larry.

[Annette]

If people are informed of the economics of solar panels they will change.

Your strange idea that liberals are rich is beyond silly. Liberals are rich, poor and middle class. Buck up your ideas and get into the 20th century the you can try for the 21st. As to you idea that global warming is a fraud, got any science?? Over 90% of scientists say global warming is happening. The 10% seem to be in the pay of oil companies, the Republican party and other elderly sorts of people. About the same percentage who used to believe in the flat earth. Look into science, get informed.

[UnbiasView]

If solar would save people the kind of money you think, they would add them to their house or building. . . . the technology isn't there yet and they aren't the answer yet.