Rebooting the Future
Thinking about Sustainability, Climate Change, and Clean Technology
Rebooting the Future

Leadership by Example: Campus-Community Collaboration on Climate Protection

I wrote the following for the October 2011 issue of The ACUPCC Implementer and thought I should also share it here:
Embedded in the American College & University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is the notion of leadership by example. By committing their institutions to the goal of carbon neutrality, the presidents who are signatories to the ACUPCC underscore the critical role of higher education in meeting the challenge of climate change and building a more sustainable future.

Universities and colleges in the United States have historically been crucibles of social change and laboratories for new ideas and creative solutions to some of society’s toughest problems. In this sense, the ACUPCC is part of a long tradition in our country. What is new, however, is the scale of the problem and the threat it poses to human civilization. Simply providing a model of sustainability will not suffice this time around. Campuses can only truly become sustainable if the communities around them are sustainable. In this sense, implicit in the ACUPCC is the commitment to not only dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the university or college, but also collaborate with the larger community in doing so.

The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) seeks to demonstrate what this kind of Ithaca Commonscollaboration looks like and the impact it can have on a region’s economic and environmental health. With a population of about 100,000, Tompkins County includes three ACUPCC signatories: Cornell University, Ithaca College, and Tompkins Cortland Community College. These three institutions also happen to be among the top employers in the county. At the same time, the city of Ithaca, the town of Ithaca, and the county government have made formal commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the latter calling for a decrease in emissions of 80 percent by 2050 and establishing an interim goal of 20 percent by 2020.

TCCPI seeks to leverage these climate action commitments to mobilize a countywide energy efficiency effort and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. The coalition, launched in June 2008, currently consists of local leaders from more than forty organizations, institutions, and businesses in the county organized into five sectors: business/financial, education, local government, nonprofit, and youth. Each of these sectors has selected a representative to the steering committee, which tracks the progress of the coalition’s projects and sets the agenda for the monthly meetings of the whole group.

Among the projects currently underway is an effort to explore the feasibility of a combined heating and power plant shared by Cayuga Medical Center and its next door neighbor, the Museum of the Earth. Working with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, TCCPI has also helped to support the establishment of the Tompkins County Energy Corps, which is made up of students from Cornell and Ithaca College who carry out informational energy audits for homeowners, share information with them about state and federal incentives, and encourage concrete steps to improve the energy performance of their residences. Other projects involve the implementation of a $375,000 EPA Climate Showcase Community grant secured by the Tompkins County Planning Office and EcoVillage at Ithaca, both TCCPI members, and the rollout this fall of a countywide campaign to raise awareness about the importance of energy savings.

Perhaps the most ambitious effort undertaken by TCCPI is its current attempt to shape the economic development agenda not just of Tompkins County but the seven other counties in the region that make up what is known as “the Southern Tier.” In particular, TCCPI has called for the implementation throughout the region of large-scale commercial energy efficiency and renewable energy projects totaling $100 million.

This past summer New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a sweeping new initiative that has created a remarkable opportunity for the Southern Tier to think strategically about major investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The governor has established ten regional councils that have until November 14 to submit proposals for a share of a $1 billion fund established on behalf of a coordinated economic development strategy. Each of the councils is co-chaired by an academic and business leader. Governor Cuomo has appointed David Skorton, president of Cornell University, and Tom Tranter, president and CEO of Corning Enterprises, to head up the Southern Tier group.

The economic development funding has been put together from multiple agencies in the form of grants and tax incentives. The ability to leverage a small portion of this money to develop potential sites for energy upgrades, carry out the feasibility studies, and issue the RFPs would make it possible to secure the necessary private capital. These sites would primarily involve airports, school systems, college and university campuses, hospitals, and local government buildings, but could also include commercial and industrial buildings. TCCPI has proposed deploying $1 million in state support for a revolving fund to help attract up to $100 million in private capital. By aggregating the commercial energy efficiency and renewable energy projects and coordinating the effort, an attractive investment portfolio would be created, hundreds of jobs created, administrative costs substantially reduced, and significant energy savings realized.

The key, then, is scale. Such a far reaching initiative would require a collaborative platform similar to TCCPI for deploying clean energy technologies across government, commercial, industrial, and educational organizations for maximum impact on economic growth and environmental health. It remains to be seen whether Governor Cuomo will approve such an approach. But the energy working group of the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council has endorsed the TCCPI proposal and it has a good chance of being included in the overall package submitted to Cuomo on November 14.

The bottom line? TCCPI clearly represents the next logical stage in the process initiated by the ACUPCC. With its emphasis on campuses and communities partnering to engage climate and energy issues, the TCCPI model provides a framework for multisector collaboration that holds out hope of a brighter future for all, demonstrating that job creation, energy security, and responsible stewardship of the environment are not mutually exclusive.

Posted by Peter at 11/27/2011 11:27 PM | Add Comment

Creating New Spaces for Connecting in New Ways

I contributed the following post to Second Nature's blog recently.  It was part of a series by Second Nature staff on why we work in the field of sustainability.  Thanks to Georges Dyer for the gentle prodding! 

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas,” John Maynard Keynes has observed, “but in escaping from the old ones.” Nowhere is the truth of this observation clearer than in our continued adherence to an economy based on fossil fuels. As more than one study has determined, we have the means at our disposal to move into a clean energy world in which the power of the wind, sun, water, tides, and other renewable sources is tapped and runaway climate change is averted. The latest of these studies comes from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which earlier this month released a report surveying the already existing technologies that, in combination, could make this happen. The critical missing components are the necessary policies that would drive change in this direction and the political will to implement them.

I get up every day and do the work that I do because I want to help create the public pressure and culture of collaboration that will make these changes occur. I get up every day and do the work that I do because I believe each one of us has the responsibility to be a subject in history and not just an object of history. I get up every day and do the work that I do because there is no silver bullet, no magic wand, that can make the immense problems confronting us go away. The only thing that will work is to escape from the old myths of independence and self-reliance and embrace the truths of interdependence and mutuality.

Understanding these truths and harnessing the power of the network is at the heart of what makes Second Nature so effective. The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) are both products of this approach to change. They are collaborative efforts to create the conditions for the emergence of a new paradigm, one that involves a shift from the mechanistic, atomistic solutions of the industrial age to the organic, interconnected web of the digital age. They are part of the largest social movement in all human history, what Paul Hawken calls “the blessed unrest.”

The overturning of the old paradigm will only happen if we intentionally and strategically create what Gibrán Rivera refers to as “the spaces for connection.” Collaboration, inclusivity, and mutual respect make it possible for us to move upstream, where the real solutions are. As Rivera puts it, “By re-inventing the ways in which we come together we begin to live in the world we are trying to build.” Second Nature, together with the generous support of the Park Foundation, have provided me with the invaluable space not only for connection but also experimentation, the opportunity to reinvent myself as a social entrepreneur and explore new models of partnership and change such as the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI). And for that I will always be grateful.

Posted by Peter at 5/31/2011 10:46 PM | Add Comment

Keeping the Social in Sustainability

Once again I've been asked  to serve as an "outside expert" for an online course on "Integrating Sustainability into Training and Curriculum."  And once again I've been asked a terrific question by one of the students in the class; in this case, he serves as the sustainability coordinator for a community college in the Upper Midwest.

The question goes like this:

Most equate sustainability with the environmental realm and often fail to make the connection that sustainabiility is multifaceted. A recent teaching cohort in sustainability that I organized this
academic year was made up of liberal arts and technical faculty, representing a wonderful diversity of disciplines, yet the conversations always seemed to revert back to the environmental realm. Economics and sustainability was understood by most, but that darned old social dimension just seemed out of reach. There is a mind-set that is hard to crack. What advice can you give that can help me better facilitate such groups in the future? 

In many ways, this question gets at the fundamental challenge for the sustainability movement.  How do we make sure that the social dimension of sustainability is kept at the center of the conversation and its connection with the environmental dimension made clear? 

I have two approaches to suggest, one theoretical and the other practical.  The more theoretical approach involves understanding the role of diversity in both the ecosystem and social/cultural system.  Few people would dispute the notion that biodiversity is a central condition for the health of the ecosystem.  In fact, it is widely understood that greater biodiversity means greater health.  This is why the sixth and latest mass extinction, predicted by E.O. Wilson in The Future of Life to eliminate half of the existing species by 2100 at the current rate, is such a cause for concern. 

Just as diversity is vital to the health of the ecosystem, so it plays a central part in the health of our social system.  Given the impact of human beings on both biodiversity and climate change, it is clear that unless we pay attention to the social and cultural well being of humans we will not succeed in meeting the environmental challenges that threaten our very survival; the two are inextricably linked.

Why is diversity crucial to social and cultural well being?  Let me offer one example that I think helps to illuminate the connection between diversity in the biological and social spheres.  Obviously, creativity and innovation are required if we are to come up with effective solutions to the issues of biodiversity, climate change, and the transition to a low carbon economy.  The famous and overused Einstein quotation about how the problems we face will never be solved by the same thinking that first created the problems is relevant here. 

The most recent research, as outlined in Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From, underscores the extent to which innovation is best fostered in a dynamic social web rather than in intellectual isolation.  Those "eureka moments" of the lone genius are few and far between.  The most fertile environments for sparking creativity, as Johnson suggests, are those in which diverse and even divergent perspectives come together and interact.  In short, the more diverse the social system and the greater the degree of engagement the more likely it is that we will develop the necessary solutions to the immense challenges we face in the 21st century.  It's a pretty good bet that the same old elites in the same old silos (read higher education as we know it) that created the environmental crisis of our time will not come up with the answers we need. 

What about the more concrete suggestion for making sure in talking about sustainability we don't lose track of the social dimension, especially the issues of equity and justice?  I can sum this up in one word: food.  If there is one thing that brings together the environmental and social better than any other, this is it.  Food makes real the connection in a way that more abstract concepts of  biodiversity and climate change simply don't and can't.  Everybody relates to food because it is a vital part of everyone's day to day life and there are very few people who do not derive significant pleasure from eating food.  Even more important, there are few more widely agreed upon measures of equity and justice in society than access to high quality, healthy, and affordable food. 

A thoughtful discussion of how the food movement can revitalize environmentalism can be found in a recent column in Time by Bryan Walsh, the magazine's environmental reporter. Walsh rightly argues that the food movement has the potential not only to change the way we eat and farm but also "the way we work and relate to one another."  It is the social and political diversity of the food movement and its decentralized character that makes it so powerful.  The food movement has taken root and spread rapidly from Berkeley to the Bronx and from Wal-Mart to Whole Earth.  In other words, its structure mimics that of a healthy and vibrant biosphere.  

More than any other issue, food has the greatest potential to connect the social and the environmental in ways that can engage the most fervent social justice advocates, on the one hand. and most passionate environmentalists, on the other, and help them see what they have in common.  We need  to make sure that not only are our gardens properly tended but that everyone has a seat at the table.  Could you pass the guacamole, please?

Posted by Peter at 5/9/2011 6:31 PM | Add Comment

Cornell Names TCCPI 2011 Partner in Sustainability

Since 2008, thanks to the generosity of the Park Foundation, I've been working on building the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) coalition. As coordinator, I've had the opportunity to work with a terrific group of visionary leaders from Ithaca and Tompkins County to help our community significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy. Cornell University, a signatory of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), has been a crucial player in the formation of this coalition. It was thus very exciting for TCCPI to receive the 2011 Partner in Sustainability Award from Cornell last Friday. 



Here's the Ithaca Journal article on this announcement:

The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative was awarded the second annual Partners in Sustainability Award on Friday. 

The award, presented by the Cornell University President's Sustainable Campus Committee, recognized the initiative for its ongoing partnership in regional carbon reduction strategies, according to a statement released by Cornell.

Among the achievements of the group are the creation of peer-to-peer mentoring, development of a regional strategy for achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the development of financing mechanisms for homeowners and businesses to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets.

In the statement, Cornell sustainability manager Daniel Roth said, "By recognizing groups that partner with higher education institutions to advance sustainability, we build on the successes of research and teaching, and acknowledge that we must also bring together practitioners and leaders throughout the world in support of new policies and practices."

The award is given each year to one or more recipients who have made significant contributions to the sustainable development of New York and the Cornell campus through collaboration with the university, according to the statement.

Award winners are evaluated on research, regional stewardship, education and public engagement.

This award is a wonderful recognition of the good work carried out by the coalition and a reminder of how much work remains to be done.

Posted by Peter at 5/5/2011 2:27 AM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Envisioning a Low-Carbon Future


I was invited recently to contribute an article to the Tompkins Weekly Signs of Sustainability series, organized by Sustainable Tompkins. It appeared in the February 28, 2011 issue. Here it is (with hyperlinks added):

Listening to the rhetoric of oil, coal and gas company executives such as the Koch brothers, you would think they were champions of limited government and the free market. In fact, however, the fossil fuel industry is one of the most subsidized businesses in the U.S. and its burgeoning profits would shrink dramatically without federal support. According to the Environmental Law Institute, the U.S. government provided the industry with $72 billion between 2002 and 2008. About $54 billion of that total was permanent tax credits for oil, coal and natural gas producers. In contrast, during that same period, the renewable energy industry received $29 billion, most of it also in the form of federal tax credits. The difference is that none of these tax credits is permanent.

On top of these enormous subsidies for oil, coal and gas, there are staggering external costs incurred as a result of our dependence on fossil fuels. These include the expense of defending strategic oil interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, the damage to air quality and our health and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. Then there is the looming crisis of peak oil and our growing competitive disadvantage as other countries such as China rush to embrace clean energy technologies. Taking all of these factors into account, it’s hard not to believe that relying solely on fossil fuel energy is foolhardy.

The Pentagon knows this. At a recent White House summit on clean energy, I spoke with several Army officers from Fort Carson in Colorado and it was clear they were hard at work making the transition to renewables and energy efficiency. No one had to remind them of the tremendous sacrifice in lives and dollars sustained in military operations as a result of our dependence on foreign oil. And no one had to convince them that climate change was a rising national security risk; they had their own hard data about the impact of global warming on political and economic stability around the world.

In light of these developments, it makes perfect sense that President Obama is seeking to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars that the government gives to oil and gas companies. As he put it in a speech at Penn State earlier this month, “It’s time to stop subsidizing yesterday’s energy; it’s time to invest in tomorrow’s.” The redirected dollars would go toward the development of wind, solar and geothermal power, energy efficiency technology and building upgrades.

In his Penn State remarks Obama called on Americans to take up the challenge of energy innovation. The Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) has been doing just that since June 2008. A coalition of community leaders from the business, financial, nonprofit, local government and education sectors, TCCPI has brought together many of the key organizations and institutions in Tompkins County to explore ways we can build a low carbon future and achieve the county’s target of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In particular, TCCPI has worked closely with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Tompkins County, to launch the Tompkins Energy Conservation Corps (TECC), consisting primarily of students from Cornell, Ithaca College and TC3. Pursuing an innovative approach to the social marketing of residential energy retrofits, Energy Corps members carry out energy assessments on the homes of Tompkins County leaders to underscore the importance of energy conservation and its impact on the local economy. In addition, TECC conducts outreach efforts through community blower-door workshops, youth activities, employer brown bag lunch events and an evolving marketing campaign.

It is efforts like these in countless communities across the U.S. that will make it possible for us to reengage as citizens in a democratic society and take our country in a different direction, one that steps back from the brink of ecological disaster and moves towards a world in which the balance between the natural world and human civilization is restored and a more just and equitable future for our children and grandchildren is made possible. In the end, it will be people, not technology, who make the difference.

Posted by Peter at 3/2/2011 8:18 PM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Building a Culture of Sustainability at an Online University

I'm serving as an outside "expert" this semester in a course on "Integrating Sustainability into Training and Curriculum," addressing student questions related to their reading of Boldly Sustainable. One of the questions posed was particularly challenging: how can people who work and study at higher education institutions that offer mostly online courses help promote sustainability on their campuses?

"We do all want to see these changes, but it never seems to be as cut and dried as many of these best case scenarios offer," the student wrote. "I know there are more people I can bring to the cause ... but with 8 campuses spread between two states and the ethos (we have a big online program), it’s hard to get anyone together."

I thought it might be useful to post my response here:

Wow, Laura, talk about going right to the core of the problem! First, let me assure you that you are not alone in facing this particular challenge. Every campus deals with this issue, even those commonly viewed as "the green elite" schools such as Middlebury or Brown. In your case, though, the challenge is complicated by the fact that your institution is defined in large part by its extensive use of web-based learning and multiple campuses across two states, which means that there is a more dispersed student and faculty community than you would find in a more traditional institution.

The trick is to find a way to turn this seeming liability into an advantage. One possible way to do this would be to leverage the creative potential of social media to engage students and faculty in a conversation about sustainability and climate change, and promote actual behavior change on the part of individuals. If you haven't already done so, establishing a Facebook page for greening the campuses is an obvious first move; getting a Twitter conversation going is also another obvious step you can take. But how do you generate interest in using these tools?

The most important thing in any social marketing effort -- which is what we're talking about here -- is to get people to make an early incremental commitment. If you ask folks for too much upfront, you're likely to scare them off. From this perspective, getting people to "follow" you on Twitter and "like" you on Facebook could be seen as one of the ways that you can get people to make their first incremental commitment. But you need to follow up with something more substantial quickly or you will lose momentum.

Given the dispersed nature of your community, it might make sense to get people to commit as individuals to changing some aspect of their personal lifestyle and in this way build a more tangible community of shared purpose. You could use David Gershon's Low Carbon Diet to suggest a range of actions that people could take and how much each action would reduce that individual's carbon footprint. But you need to provide a way for people to make these commitments public so that they can hold each other accountable and a way to measure the results. Both of these (accountability and the ability to measure progress) are important principles of social change theory.

I recommend that you take a look at the Interfaith Power and Light initiative, which puts together a really interesting model for doing something along these lines using the web. Take a look, in particular, at its Cool Congregations project and 10% Challenge. I think these ideas could be pretty easily translate from congregations to student and faculty teams. You might organize along department or degree lines and pit them against each other (business on one campus versus business on the other campuses, for example) in a contest to see who could lose the most weight on the low carbon diet.  

In addition, to fuel the competition, you could organize a contest around each participating team making a short (2-3 minutes) video about sustainability and/or climate change using a cell phone or small video camcorder like a Flip (but nothing more sophisticated or expensive because then people won't be competing on a level playing field) and having a panel of judges (fair and balanced, you decide!) to select a winning team. You could even have winners for different categories; comedy, drama, action, and musical, for instance. During the contest you could get participants to post the videos on the web and let people know about them through Facebook and Twitter. Instead of a formal panel of judges, using the web, you could have people vote for their favorites. Or you could do both: "the people's choice" award and the judges' award. You might be able to get the administration to put up a small amount of money that the winning teams could commit to some climate or sustainability action on campus (a student organic garden, the showing of a relevant movie, or more bike racks, for example).

The ultimate goal of these activities is to build a network of committed activists that you can then leverage for more direct collective action on the campuses such as a student vote to mandate fees for sustainability work in the university. Even a small annual fee of $10-15 can add up very quickly to a substantial sum of money that can then be used towards increasing the sustainability of the campuses. You might even be able to raise enough money this way to hire a sustainability coordinator!

Remember that you don't need everyone on board to carry the day. The kinds of activities suggested above allow you to attract and engage the early adopters, who can then reach out to a larger number of people on campus to build what is known in social change theory as "the early majority." In many cases, the early adopters and early majority can be enough together to tip the balance in the right direction. Of course, there will always be "the laggards," the folks who will never change their behavior or consciousness. Don't waste your energy or time knocking yourself out to get this group on board -- to put it bluntly, you don't need them. 

It sounds as if there have been a number of truly significant changes in university operations and that what you are seeking is to go beyond that to shift people's behavior and consciousness. I think perhaps something like I'm suggesting above will help. At least I hope so!

Good luck! Your commitment and passion is inspiring and gives me hope for our future.

Does anyone else have suggestions for Laura? Anything you've tried at a web-based university or other learning organization that has worked?

Posted by Peter at 11/16/2010 1:18 AM | View Comments (1) | Add Comment

Towards Interdependence Day

I received the following a few days ago from Brian Malarkey, a friend and colleague of mine at Kirksey, a green architecture firm in Houston. He and John Kirksey are trying to raise awareness about the connection between the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and climate change. I thought it was worth sharing on the Fourth of July:

Happy Independence Day!

Ponder this while you savor the anniversary of the American Revolution.

As we approach July Fourth, the 72nd day of the BP oil spill, the USGS’s Flow Rate Technical Group estimates that the flow of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico has averaged 500,000 gallons per day or roughly 1500 tons of carbon per day.

As tragic as this event is, it does not compare to the 86,000,000 tons of carbon per day we introduce into the earth’s atmosphere through our use of fossil fuels and deforestation. In other words, each day we voluntarily release carbon comparable to 57,000 times the amount leaking into the gulf on a daily basis.

Did you know… Of the carbon that we add to the atmosphere each day, roughly 90% of it will remain, active on our earth 500 years from now.

Did you know… There are three major carbon sinks (repositories) on the earth; the oceans are the largest, followed by the land (rocks), and lastly the tropical forest. The world’s oceans are reaching full saturation and are taking up less and less carbon while becoming highly acidic. This combination is having a significantly negative impact on marine life. The tropical forests sequester about 1 billion tons of carbon per year while simultaneously deforestation is contributing about 2 billion tons of new carbon each year.

Did you know… The US spends about $1 billion per day on imported oil and petroleum products, many of these products coming from governments with strong anti-American sentiments.

Did you know… The fossil fuel industry spends roughly $1.5 billion each year with lobbyists in Washington to influence our energy policies (does not include political contributions).

Did you know… Contrary to the speculation that volcanoes represent a large source of carbon, scientists calculated that there was an actual reduction in the total carbon output during the Iceland volcanic eruption last month, due primarily to the grounding of an extensive number of airline flights coming into and out of Europe.

Did you know… 2010 is unfolding as the hottest year on record since reliable instrumental temperatures records began in the late 1800s. The first decade of the 21st Century is already the the hottest decade on record.

Did you know…Coal produces 2100 lbs of carbon per Mwhr of energy, while natural gas produces 950 lbs of carbon per Mwhr, or only 45% the carbon of coal.

Is it time for another American Revolution; a technical revolution? Can we envision another Independence Day in our future?

Think about it.

There's certainly a lot here to ponder. We seem to be reaching some kind of turning point in the country's understanding of the high environmental price we pay for fossil fuel and the importance of developing clean energy alternatives.We may not be at the turning point, but we are approaching it. 

I would go beyond the above argument, though. No doubt technological innovation will be a major component of any effort to build a more sustainable future.  But we also need a cultural revolution, a completely different way of understanding the relationship between human society and the natural world.  We need to figure out that we don't stand apart from the natural world but instead are enmeshed in it and that our very lives depend on the health of this relationship.

What would this culture look like? I think it would look a lot like EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI), where I'm privileged to serve on the board. A 176-acre co-housing community and nonprofit educational organization just outside of Ithaca, NY, EcoVillage has been up and running for over twenty years now and has emerged as one of the most advanced sustainable communities in the world. 

Thanks to the visionary leadership of its executive director, Liz Walker, EVI is now undertaking a third neighborhood, called "TREE." This latest neighborhood will feature 30 affordable and accessible energy efficient homes and apartments that will have a near zero carbon footprint. They will be designed to allow its occupants to "age in place," thus contributing to the richness of the EVI community by making it easier for folks to stay as they grow older.

How much demand is there for this kind of housing? Well, if EVI is any guide, it's significant. TREE has filled all 30 units before even breaking ground and there is a waiting list.

"EcoVillage is far more than just a residential community," observed Walker in a recent interview. "It's a whole concept, an experiment in sustainable living and holistic agriculture. Part of our mission is to demonstrate a new way of living, to increase biodiversity. We focus on the conservation of open space using organic farming, and we had one of the first CSAs (community-supported agriculture organizations) in the country."

So, yes, clean technology is part of the answer. But just as important, perhaps even more so, is the fostering of communities like EVI. We need more than a "technical revolution." We need, as Liz Walker puts it, a whole "new way of lviing." That's what a real Independence Day would look like: something we might call "Interdependence Day." 

Posted by Peter at 7/4/2010 6:04 PM | Add Comment

The Digital Cathedral in the Age of Democratic Sustainability

This is the first part of an article that just appeared in Issue #25, Spring/Summer 2010 of Terrain.org: The Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. I've been working on this article in one form or another for about four years, so I'm excited about finally finishing it and getting it published.

How can the digital revolution and the new social media it has spawned nurture the development of democratic sustainability? By democratic sustainability I mean a social and political process that engages citizens as active agents of social change in the complex task of balancing economic prosperity, effective environmental stewardship, and social justice. As Paul Hawken notes in Blessed Unrest, the democratic sustainability movement has emerged “from the bottom up,” becoming “the largest social movement in all of human history.” It “grows and spreads in every city and country,” writes Hawken, “and involves virtually every tribe, culture, language, and religion, from Mongolians to Uzbeks to Tamils.”

Moving toward democratic sustainability has less to do with technology than a massive change in human consciousness, one that encourages systems thinking and transforms the relations of people to each other and to natural world. Nonetheless, tools are necessary to facilitate this task, and the rise of the Internet and digital technology has provided us with new and potent means to do so. As Hawken observes, “There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected.” Even as we acknowledge the “other side” of the Internet—its potential to splinter thought and concentration, take time away from reflection, and exacerbate a growing nature-deficit-disorder among youth—its unprecedented ability to construct global movements beckons.

Community is the essential concept underpinning sustainability. Whether an ecosystem or social system, the dynamics of interconnectedness and interdependence are what make growth and health possible. In medieval society, the cathedral embodied this understanding of what was known at the time as the “Great Chain of Being.” An awe-inspiring structure, the cathedral by its physical presence affirmed the vertical hierarchy that held medieval society together, and its construction gave individuals in the community a clear and compelling sense of their place in the world and the links that bound them to each other. “Building a cathedral,” says Robert Scott in The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral, “entailed an ongoing, difficult, yet energizing form of collective enterprise in which people could take enormous pride and around which they could rally a community.”

Posted by Peter at 4/1/2010 7:35 PM | Add Comment

Cornell Moves Beyond Coal

I recently contributed this post to the Second Nature blog  "Campus Green Builder":

Not all green buildings on campus come with lots of windows and sunlight. I recently attended the grand opening of Cornell University's new Combined Heat and Power Plant. Given the quality of the conversation about climate change in the U.S. these days, it’s easy to get discouraged and cynical. But I came away from this particular event feeling like Cornell had taken a real step forward. The new plant will allow Cornell to stop using coal in 18 months and will reduce the university’s carbon footprint by 28 percent. Getting off coal power and hooking up to an interstate natural gas pipeline that runs close by the campus will also save 100,000 gallons a year of diesel fuel used to deliver the coal by truck from West Virginia mines. Now that’s green by anyone’s standards. 

Especially impressive was President David Skorton’s strong expression of support for the ACUPCC at the opening. "When I signed the President's Commitment," he said, "I did not know how we would get to climate neutrality, but I did have faith in our collective ability as a university to educate and discover our way through, and today is an example of finding a piece of the larger puzzle. Although we are celebrating today, we have a long hill yet to climb."

After the remarks and a press conference, I took a tour of the new 15,000-square-foot facility located next to the old coal-fired central heating plant. It was hard to miss the two giant turbines fired by natural gas that drive the electric generators. As was explained to us over the din of the turbines, very little goes to waste; heat from the turbines makes steam that runs another generator and that steam is piped throughout the campus for heating. In fact, so little energy is wasted that solar collectors had to be installed to provide heat and hot water for the new offices and locker rooms attached to the facility!

When thinking about Cornell's switch from coal to natural gas, here's something to keep in mind: only one-third of the energy in coal actually gets used to generate electricity. The rest goes up the smokestack along with much greater carbon emissions than natural gas. Thanks to mountaintop removal, more than 470 mountains in four Appalachian states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee) have been destroyed to date providing coal for power plants such as the one that Cornell is shutting down (see "How Do You Kill a Mountain?"). Given the inefficiency of coal, that means only about 156 of those mountains went into producing electricity. The other 314 mountains were not only destroyed, they were a complete waste. Cornell's new power plant will be running at something like 85% efficiency and natural gas emits far less carbon than coal. The obvious conclusion: natural gas may be "bad," but it's dramatically less bad than coal.

No wonder the Sierra Club will be holding Cornell up as a model as it seeks to get other universities and colleges to close down their coal-fired power plants (see Campuses Beyond Coal). One down and (about) fifty-nine to go!

Posted by Peter at 2/20/2010 5:13 PM | Add Comment

The Big Idea

With the Copenhagen talks approaching, it's hard not to wonder why more people aren't engaged in the effort to prevent runaway climate change. Even as President Obama pledges 17% emissions cuts going into these crucial negotiations, new polls show that as many as 30% of Americans don't believe in global warming. Obviously, something's not working here.

Unless we move from trying to scare people into action by apocalyptic predictions of the coming climate disaster and focus on the hope and opportunity that can be generated by moving to a new energy economy, we're not going to be able to move forward at the pace necessary to have a meaningful impact. Climate and Energy Truths: Our Common Future, a study issued earlier this year by EcoAmerica, underscores the importance of grasping this insight. Carrying out focus groups and online and phone surveys, the study tested a range of conceputal frameworks and messages for speaking with the American public about energy and climate change.  It's worth reading in its entirety, but here's the report's bottom line: it's far easier to engage people "around the energy debate than the climate change debate."

There is a similar need to shift the framework in higher education when it comes to sustainability. As Andrea Putman and I note in our editorial "A New Era in Higher Education?" (in the October issue of Sustainability: The Journal of Record), the most forward looking corporations understand the need to make sustainability a strategic imperative and are gaining significant ground on their competitors during the current recession. As I've noted previously, in the words of the recent Aberdeen Group report "The ROI of Sustainability," “Far from being a philanthropic ‘nice to have’ [sustainability is a] ‘must have’ strategy for long-term, business viability and success.”

What's the lesson here for higher education leaders? Too many of them are looking at sustainability in terms of what their institutions could do to promote it ("the right thing to do") and not enough are asking, how can sustainability help us become more strategic and perform more effectively ("the smart thing to do")? The big idea that they need to wrap their heads around is that sustainability as a driver can make their institutions smarter, more reslient, and less costly to operate. Perhaps reading the EcoAmerica report would help them better share this perspective with their institutions' stakeholders and move them forward to the new energy future that beckons.

 

Posted by Peter at 11/27/2009 2:50 PM | Add Comment
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