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At ArchitectureWeek magazine, we use a four part test for green building, a "Four Leaf Green" standard for full-spectrum climate-stabilizing and environmentally-responsible buildings:

One - Maximum Overall Sustainability

As in LEED and comparable international overall sustainable building standards, including prioritizing reuse of existing structures, especially when they have cultural as well as construction value.

Two - Minimum Carbon Footprint

As in Energy Star and the UK Zero-Carbon Housing standard, and other increasingly strict prerequisite standards for limiting building carbon-equivalent footprints, and general energy consumption, over the full design-build-occupy cycle.

Three - Effective Location

Buildings are built in locations that reduce VMT by regional geography and by walkable access to frequent transit. As in the 'Living Building Challenge', buildings are built on brownfield sites or otherwise in such a way as to maintain existing natural carbon storage, ecosystem services, and biodiversity.

Four - Appropriate Size

Buildings are measured and evaluated to standards that account for climate and environmental impacts on a per-occupant basis, as well as on a per-building-area basis. Size matters, as well as efficiency.

Location is especially important, though sometimes overlooked, since the greenest building in a sprawl location will probably have a higher overall carbon footprint than an average contemporary building in a walkable urban neighborhood.

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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Lots to admire about Canada - Vancouver BC is a paragon of forward-looking city planning, for instance - but what a bunch of !@#$% and excuses about tars sands oil production.

Given that recent science shows we can only use about half of the current proven fossil fuel reserves before we push the climate out of control, why would it make any sense at all to exploit oil sands - at a higher cost of carbon, water, and habitat destruction?

A current survey of climate research in the leading scientific journal Nature ( http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/04/the_wheel_of_climate_fortune.html ) makes this important finding:

"It's clear, if we want a reasonably good chance of staying beyond 2°C warming, we cannot afford burning all the oil, gas and coal buried in the ground. We can’t actually afford burning more than half the proven reserves. If we continue burning fossil fuels at current rates we will leave the ‘safety zone’ in less than 20 years."

These refined projections of the capacity of the global system to absorb carbon dioxide pollution have several interesting implications.  One is an increasing likelihood that further investment in fossil fuel exploration will be stranded before production returns can be realized. 

Ambassadors, as well as savvy investors and corporate moguls,  should take note.

If we can only use half of what's already know to be there, it only makes sense to use the cleanest half - which probably doesn't include oil sands.

As long as carbon capture and sequestration remain a pipe dream - as they are now, with not even a demonstration project in operation - there's no basis for referencing it as a real part of the solution.

Clearcutting of the primeval forests of northern British Columbia is similarly unconscionable.  There is no such thing as "replanting" of a thousand year old forest once it's complex ecological webs have been destroyed.

We need our dear neighbor Canada to be a real leader in environmental stewardship - not just another resource extraction country that hides vast ongoing environmental destruction in its great distances.  

posted 4 years ago
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Any comments about the "high cost" of tens of billions for improved rail service need to be put in the context of hundreds and hundreds of billions spent on highways.

The "Reason Foundation" representative presented grossly manipulative misinformation on point after point.  

The Union of Concerned Scientists "study" referred to is actually a consumer guide specifically about family vacations - not a formal study, and about travel in general - and it's remarkably shaky even there, given sweeping assumptions and oversimplifications. Buses can in no way provide a legitimate substitute to excellent national and regional rail systems. 

The choices we need to make are not necessarily cheap or easy, and the issues are inherently  complex.  That doesn't mean it's better to minimize or ignore them.  

We need to work carefully and patiently from real facts, and leave out the lobbyist snow jobs, if we're going to get the grip we need on climate change.

Excellent passenger rail _is_ an essential, vital component of developing the low-carbon transportation future we urgently need.  

Thanks to our local, regional, and national political leaders who have the long-sighted public stewardship to help support this!

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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A great show today, because you've talking about something we love.  Thanks!

I have the privilege to work with a wide variety of people in and around Eugene who work on preserving and enhancing the natural ecosystems infrastructure of the urban watershed, from conserving Amazon Creek Headwaters to creating the West Eugene Wetlands Education Center, from seeking a design for the new I-5 bridge that celebrates the river crossing, to master-planning the Willamette riverfront downtown.

Everyone in the valley is directly connected to the river in some way, and the choices in our way of life impact it daily, for better and for worse. Our urban watersheds seem to represent a big chunk of the river health puzzle.

We hope and believe that, among other things, by maintaining compact growth in the Willamette Valley, while still enhancing the urban watershed, we can help the river, and help people connect with it, too.

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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Rural broadband gives more economic options to rural dwellers, and collectively, they really need these options.  Increased options and economic flexibility is especially important in a time of economic crisis.

Moreover, almost anything that let's us do more with less driving (and less paper) not only reduces living costs and increases productivity, but also moves us in the right direction in terms of essential reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions - which is incredibly important in its own right.  This effect is much greater for people who live in rural areas, because they tend to have longer to drive.

This is the very essence of green stimulus.

Meanwhile, the percentage of the US population who work at home has been steadily increasing at about 25% per decade since 1980 (based on US Census figures).  Rural residents need these facilities just as much or more than urban dwellers, but just as government needed to supplement the free market to get them electricity and phones, so we need to supplement for for modern communications.

Good jobs created putting the stuff in, leading to ongoing cost-savings, carbon savings, and expanded economic opportunities once it's there.  Sounds like a winner.

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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"50% of funds need to be obligated within 90 days"

That sounds like money that will hit the economy in a lot less than 18 months.  Starting to help strapped employers pretty darn quickly.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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No net new highway lanes.

The U.S. (not alone) is facing two simultaneous generational crises, the financial/economic crisis and the climate/environmental crisis.

We can't afford to deal with these separately. Neither can be ignored, at our peril.  We need to deal with both at once.

Fortunately there is plenty of overlap.  We need to spend a lot of money in our local economies, and we need to update and green our infrastructure.  There are plenty of things to do that meet the needs of both crises at once.

However, there is a big institutional temptation to fall back on business as usual in response to the financial crisis - even though that's what got us into this predicament.

Probably the biggest single thing we must avoid, in the course of needed stimulus spending, is expansion of the highway system.  Plenty of robust studies demonstrate how additional net lane miles of highway effectively induce driving, sprawl, VMT, and therefore increase our carbon emissions for a long time to come.

This should be a litmus test for the green stimulus we need:  no net new miles of roadway.

Almost any other likely investment would be more environmentally desirable - and thus, would be a much better investment in our future together.

posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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The upcoming gradual switch to electric cars, as fast as it can possibly occur, is simply a red herring in the road funding conversation.

For the foreseeable future - a decade or more at least - electric vehicles will be especially lightweight, and by that nature, they will contribute negligibly to road wear and tear.

How negligibly? One single fully loaded semi-trailer truck operating full time in Oregon is likely to do more road damage than all electric vehicles on the roads in Oregon in 2018.

Does that sound right? Obviously, don't just take a poster's word for it. If you have the math, compare the fourth power of the vehicle weights.

More generally, in order to have a fact-based conversation, ask the State of Oregon to document and publish the amount of road wear caused by roadway vehicles of all weight classes, as representative individual vehicles, and collectively as vehicle classes.

(If, perhaps, we sense political resistance to full disclosure of the basic facts around this issue, consider that our trucking industry is the beneficiary of an enormous relative subsidy under the current system. How enormous? Compare the fourth power of the vehicle weights..)

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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In fact, the wear and tear on our roads by small cars, even in their hundreds of thousands, is almost negligible. The vast, overwhelming majority of Oregon roadway wear and tear comes from heavy commercial trucks, by a tremendous ratio.

As part of this discussion, the state should be tasked to clearly disclose these numbers.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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An important thing to grasp about the unfairness of a mileage tax is that, as a matter of physics, road damage does not follow a simple ratio of vehicle weights. Rather road damage is proportional to the FOURTH POWER of the axle loading of a vehicle.

That means, for example, comparing a Prius at 2900 pounds to the 2002 average light truck (pickup) at 4547 pounds, that a typical pickup truck produces about SIX TIMES more road damage than the reference light car.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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