Sustainability has unquestionably achieved a stronger place in cultural exchange over the course of the past decade. What began as a conversation mostly lead by environmentalists has branched out to include proponents from all walks of life. As the topic dances in between the realms of a cultural movement and political correctness its growing traction allows “green” and “eco” to appear on more products, agendas, powerpoint presentations and even buildings. Undoubtedly, a meaningful portion of sustainability’s frontage is realized for reasons other than actually following its mindset, but is that okay? Does having individuals and corporations pitching “green” if they don’t really subscribe to the mantra help the movement enough to justify a thin sell?
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In the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a hop, skip and jump away from Harvard University, presiding over the restored Joan Lorentz Park, the Cambridge Public Library now stands with a new image of modern grace. Attached to the existing library designed in 1887 by Van Brunt & Howe, the new work of metal and glass offers us a model for sustainable, public projects. Designed by William Rawn Associates, the building is not only a case study of integrating sustainability into a house of knowledge, but moreover, the product of diligent research by a team that is interested in sharing that knowledge and progress with the profession at large.
I have always been puzzled by the allure of reality television. In trying to decipher a method to the madness of Survivor, the Bachelor or Joe Millionaire, I can imagine that viewers are partially intrigued by challenges that are presented and overcome. When seemingly “normal” folk accomplish this variety of tests, the viewers can better relate being there themselves. It’s why we watch game shows like Wheel of Fortune, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire or Double Dare. So if the challenge is what we like to see, why exactly can we not focus on the real challenges we have for ourselves, like the myriad of sustainable opportunities laid before us, and participate in something on the right side of the screen? Is it possible to blur the lines of tangible action and entertainment to promote involvement and produce better results for a movement like sustainability?
While in the midst of an economy that is still viewed as fragile, state governments are limited in their ability to match all of their sustainability goals with appropriate funding. Money that is available, usually in the forms of grants and favorable loans, is small enough to rule out sweeping, societal changes but large enough to make people notice—and at this point that is a worthy goal. There are still far too many people far too uneducated about both threats and solutions.
Solaya Energy LLC and the State of Massachusetts are working together to install a 1.5 MW turbine near the Blandford Rest Area on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The press release from the governor’s office explains that the nearly 400-foot-tall turbine near the center of the 68-acre state-owned site, as well as a kiosk at the Service Area that will provide motorists with information about the turbine and its operation. Producing up to 3,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, the turbine could produce sufficient clean energy to power roughly 400 households.
Even before I went to London, I had heard tales about its extensive subway system. Known as “the Tube,” many boasted that the infrastructure was easier to understand, cleaner and safer than New York’s MTA service. In short, I was hearing it labeled as “better.” While the Tube is an impressive system, a closer look at its operation and costs draw into question its existence as a system of “public transit.”
New York:
New York’s underground subway system began in 1904. Over a century later, it is made up of 26 different subway routes on 9 different lines with a total of 468 individual stations. It spans across four of the five boroughs with a total of 229 miles of route track distance and 842 miles of track bed (most of New York’s system are three or four tracks across.) Transporting an average of 5 million passengers every weekday, the system carries over 1.6 billion people annually.
London:
Beginning in 1863, the Tube is made up of 11 different subway lines with a total of 270 individual stations. 250 miles of track spread across the neighborhoods of London. An average weekday hosts 3 million passengers, bringing an annual total to around 1 billion patrons. Like New York, the Tube began as a series of privately funded ventures that were eventually encompassed by municipal oversight and direction.
The train cars, also called “rolling stock”, of the Tube feature cloth-covered seats and colored handrails. Every car I traveled on was clean. The speakers announcing stations were clear. Comfort was a clear goal in the cars’ design and it was achieved. Averaging 8’6” wide, the average train is approximately 437’ long. New York’s cars are often wider at 10’across with trains as long as 600’ to provide a larger average capacity. Though New York subways can transport more passengers per ride, once inside the digs are not plush, merely smartly infrastructural with plastic seat surfaces easily cleaned. Finding a car where one can actually hear the announcements is hit or miss.
While the street grid of New York provides for fewer crossings of train lines, London’s web of streets forces many tracks be carved deeper beneath the road surface. Most tunnels in the Big Apple are 15-20’ underground, but London’s can go as deep as 65’ (a healthy five story building.) Not only can getting down to the tracks take longer, but air movement at such depths becomes more difficult. In the London heat wave of 2006, the temperature in Tube tunnels reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit.
As Americans, one of our biggest challenges in steps towards sustainability is surmounting routine and questioning social norms. Acts of repetition, some that have lasted for generations, provide a knee-jerk adversity to progressive change in daily activities even if the resulting changes would be minor. I spent my holiday season in London for ten days and my foreign surroundings seemed to be a testament to how little most would notice a number of positive changes.
When it comes to setting a benchmark for sustainability in daily routine, what I saw in England was what I would hope the American landscape will come to emulate (even if one could argue we should already be there.) Admittedly, my time in Europe is embarrassingly limited and that could explain the intensity with which I noticed some of the encouraging differences from the American culture that I am used to.
In London, efficiency seemed to be a given. Staying in two different flats (read: apartments) while I was abroad and visiting numerous establishments, nearly everywhere I went utilized technology proven to reduce consumption. Incandescent bulbs were rare, traded for either fluorescent varieties or dimmable halogens. In both residences, every toilet had dual-flush capabilities. Every sink was low-flow. Water-heaters were smaller with less capacity and had timers to shut off at night while nearly all appliances were more compact. I was not taking any meter readings, but I have to imagine these flats (not markedly smaller than New York equivalents in terms of square footage) used much less energy and water than their American counterparts.
Along with transportation and energy production/distribution, agriculture is one of our country’s largest opportunities to make progressive steps in achieving a more sustainable economy. Being extremely resource intensive, farming is intrinsically linked to our use of energy, oil and water. But as one of our oldest industries, food production takes a place at the core of American values and given that food is considered to be a non-negotiable necessity it is given a great deal of breathing room. Its place in politics and the kitchen of every American household could make any fundamental changes to its operation a long time coming.
What has to change:
There is a tendency to think of farmers as “one with the land.” Still having romantic roots in American heritage, farming can be thought of as a natural process with hands buried in rich, clean soil. Once upon a time, perhaps it was. However, American farming of today is a science that requires large inputs of resources.
As I touched on in a previous article, agriculture uses vast amounts of water. Second only to thermoelectric power generation, irrigation comprises 31% of our national water usage. Some of these methods still use surface water flood systems for distribution—markedly less efficient than advanced sprinkler technologies, though unsurprisingly cheaper. As a nation that is seeing longer and deeper droughts that lead to municipal water deficits, an opportunity to lower irrigation even 10% could provide four times the amount of water we use in all homes every year.
Though thought of as natural, farming is closely tied to the petroleum industry and oil prices. Fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides all have their roots in oil and the more we over-farm land, the more chemicals we need to generate a constant volume of crops. According to biologist and writer Janine Benyus, “since 1945, pesticide use has risen 3,300 percent, but overall crop loss to pests has not gone down. In fact despite our pounding the United States with 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides every year, crop losses have increased 20 percent.”
A challenge to change the way we farm can quickly irk oil interests. In 2001, over $11 billion of pesticides were sold in the U.S.–accounting for 34% of the global volume–according to the E.P.A. Some experts say that we have placed ourselves in a cyclical process where oil products beget oil products. In her book Biomimicry, Benyus argues that our current industry requires $2.70 of oil products to produce $4.00 worth of crops. Additionally, all of those chemicals require energy to produce, package, transport and apply.
We also throw a great deal of money at farming. Next to the oil industry, agriculture is one of the most bountiful recipients of government subsidies used to help keep the prices of food cheap for the American consumer. Taxpayers spend tens of billion dollars a year helping to pay farmers so that our trips to the supermarket cost less.
Why it won’t change:
Despite the ways that farming could become a more streamlined industry, arguably better for U.S. citizens, few sectors of the economy can claim such an entrenched position in our society.
The U.S. has long since taken the stance of wanting to be a food-rich nation that can provide enough produce to leave a net-exporting. Wheat, for example, is one of our countries largest exports and goes all over the world. This can easily be spun as a national security precaution for the country. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2007 there were $70.9 billion of agricultural exports.
Efforts to revamp the agriculture industry can meet an uphill battle at Capitol Hill. Farming interests have a protected position in the government for a number of reasons. The middle of the country is responsible for bulk of our farming with produce coming from states with lowest population densities. Farther away from the coasts, economies become less varied in the heartland, leaving agriculture interests as a larger portion of total economic fuel than a given industry could achieve in a coastal state. The result is a larger percentage of voters being aligned on larger range of political issues, making their government representatives less likely to veer far from constituent opinion if they have goals for re-election.
When it comes to fashioning new laws on the federal level, while state population may be rewarded in the House of Representatives, the fact that Kansas has one sixth of the population of New York (3 million vs. 19.5 million) makes no difference in the Senate. Both states get the same two senators, making the political presence of the agricultural heartland a force to be reckoned with since it can take only 11% of the nation’s population to block a bill.
We have also become rather reliant on cheap food prices and our society is calibrated to its current price levels. It is easy to believe that any efforts to reshape the farming industry that raise costs would be passed onto the end-buyers. No politician wants to be responsible for making meat, potatoes and milk more expensive to low-income voters.
A recent article in the Economist also points out that the life in the rural Midwest is much more carbon-dependent than their coastal, urban brethren. Notions like mass transit and hybrid electrics are few and far between in the Great Plains where the long drives of trucks and hard hours of farm equipment are tied closely to gas prices. While not necessarily against sustainability, many farming families do not see how they can live their lives without the use of fossil fuels.
What are the options?
So what about organic? Organic farming does do away with the chemical base behind engineered crops and could drastically change the way that farming is practiced. As a resident of New York, I see organic food as a common occurrence in high demand, but it is easy for those of us living in the coastal United States to lose site of what is still a very small, expensive market. According to the Organic Consumer Association organic sales totaled $17 billion in 2006 leaving it as only 3% of the country’s retail food and beverage market. Furthermore, only 31% of sales came from mainstream grocery stores with the majority coming from natural chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s or small independent operations.
Permaculture is an evolving practice that suggests food can be planted not in single-crop, plowed, chemical soaked fields, but diverse combinations of plants combined on the same plot that use each other to control pests, weeds and nutrients. The Land Institute is one of the leading entities in permaculture study as it tests combinations of crops to see which are most successful. These fields reportedly use less water, no artificial additives and produce higher yields. Naturally (no pun intended), the catch comes in the lack of affordability in maintenance and harvesting—but they are working on it.
An example is the Native American tradition of Three Sisters Farming, or companion farming, that combines corn, squash and climbing beans in the same plot with each helping the others grow. The corn provides a climbing surface for the beans, which in turn add nitrogen to the soil. Meanwhile, the squash helps retain moisture in the soil as a ground cover that blocks out the sun. The synergy of the system strikes a familiar chord with a well balanced ecosystem. This type of exploration takes time. Native Americans likely had generations to master their practice. We have been working on it for one.
The size of the subsidies that farmers receive should also give the government a large bargaining chip for beginning to gradually implement change. Requirements for percentages of alternative energy or mandating certain efficiencies for irrigation equipment can be accomplished by linking goals to the prospect of tax-payer cash.
I am also not convinced that sustainability and renewables cannot play a larger role in changing the landscape of a common farmer’s lifestyle. The roofs of barns and homes are prime for solar power collection that can be used to power cars, farm vehicles or water pumps. We are already beginning to see fields being planted beneath wind turbines. Food and animal waste has a future in anaerobic power generation were oxygen deprived chambers can help bacteria compose food into methane gas. Hydroponics and vertical farming are also possibilities dotting the horizon. Unsurprisingly, one of the largest hurdles to overcome is a population’s resistance to change.
Photo Credit: Flickr Uncle Phooey
Yesterday the Commerce Department released that housing starts in the U.S. had dropped 10.6% in the month of October from the previous month. Cast in a predictably negative light, the markets responded with downward movement due to rising fears of a slow pace for our economic recovery. I find myself in the minority that sees this as long term good news, a market condition we should be embracing as we take a rare economic opportunity to try and move our jobs base from our historical model of unlimited growth to one of sustainable capitalism.
Traditionally, housing starts are seen as a leading indicator of economic health as they represent fuel for the construction industry which contributes 4-5% of our national GDP according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Building and purchasing new homes is one of the quickest ways for Americans to spend money—which is one of the things we do best. But not only is there no reason for us to be building more homes right now, but we should not emerge into a new economy built on the foundations of an outmoded concept of creating square footage ad infinitum.
If one were to forget the economic assumption that more housing starts is always positive, it is easy to see the number of reasons why we have no need for more housing right now. The recession has left us with an excess of homes. An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that “the number of homes listed for sale was 3.63 million in September according to the National Association of Realtors. That is enough to last about eight months at the current rate of sales.” The article also points out that foreclosures are still on the rise, leaving more property in the hands of banks (and even the FDIC) that want, and need, to unload them at bargain values, only further pressuring prices. We do not need more of a product that is in declining demand from a consumer that cannot afford to purchase it.
Furthermore, the NRDC’s Kaid Benfield pointed out last month that aging baby boomers are estimated to begin unloading their suburban homes at a rate of 5% per year between 2010 and 2030, only adding to the glut of available space.
Suburban homes are also not where we should be focusing our money and efforts when it comes to new living space. The financial crisis offered an opportunity to finally rein an expansion of suburban sprawl that has gone on for decades. New homes farther away from town and city centers bring with them more utilities, more emergency services and more energy wasted in commuting. We should be bolstering our urban centers and drawing people back to their inherent efficiencies of living. To have our government working on a carbon bill while we are using more farmland and natural landscape to prop up developer homes is ridiculous. It is the difference between the image of sustainability and the nature of sustainability—the latter is an encompassing system that affects a lifestyle in its entirety.
If Americans are serious about creating a more sustainable economy, then eventually we need to move away from a system where our barometer of success is continuous growth. It is possible for our country to be healthy without building an increasing number of new homes each month. Of course, it means asking those annoying questions like “What happens when there is no more acreage left to develop?” or “How many people can our country feasibly support indefinitely?” The easiest way to avoid the answers is to begin changing our trajectory now. Instead of new home construction we can be focusing on building retrofits, restoration and deconstruction. These practices use less energy, produce less waste and improve upon the building stock that we already have to make it better instead of tearing it down. One can imagine a combination of virgin building, recycling and upcycling that could bring us much closer to a level of construction stasis.
Construction is only one of the areas where we need to re-align our practices to change our economic growth expectations. Transit, energy production and distribution and water infrastructure all are viewed as continuously growing commodities and can all be curbed into regenerative social practices.
Photo Credit: Flickr movers_4u
In a consumer-driven market like the U.S., change often rests in the hands of buyers and investors. The fastest way to spread a new social norm through society is by making a product that people want to pay for. The environmental arena has made a lot of progress in what can be a difficult arena: turning a social movement into a salable marketplace—but the conversion comes with a catch. Organizations and companies that end up contributing to the “cause” want to make sure people know about it so it does not seem like money is just evaporating. For a number of entities this creates a tough choice of spending on things that are easiest to see or things that make the most difference.
A couple days ago I had the chance to sit down with a good friend who works as part of the financial department of a college in New England. For the sake of discretion, I will call him “Mr. Nes” (North Eastern School). Mr. Nes told me that his institution was on board with lowering their carbon footprint and increasing the efficiency of their campus. Apparently, they are one of a growing number of schools that are becoming more serious about being greener. This particular college was working with a consulting company to try and realize the best ways to address the issue of upgrading an existing campus.
Mr. Nes said that it was not long before the school began to run into tough choices when it came to what methods would be used in the campaign. It became clear that the efforts that would add the most benefit environmentally would not be showy additions that you could point out on a tour. At the same time, when it comes to endowment dollars, donors want to know that the money is being used wisely.
“The thing that makes the most sense is putting in a cogeneration plant” behind an existing building. “But no one would ever see it. On the other hand, we could throw up a bunch of solar panels on the admissions building, but the savings would be minimal,” Mr. Nes confessed.
The dilemma is not an uncommon one and will likely be around until the market matures beyond the point of needing to bolster recognition for making good choices. From anything to single family homes to college campuses, the measures that make the most difference are often not the ones that look best in an alumni newsletter. Systems like rain water capture tanks, grey-water filtration, power storage, and using geothermal or outside air for heating and cooling all are relatively absent from the public eye yet provide amazing savings in resource consumption. On the other hand, wind turbines, photovoltaics, low flow fixtures or waterless urinals are features that people can interact with.
Buildings like One Bryant Park end up with some combination of both, providing systems that produce a better bottom line and satisfy the need for publicity. Investors and pedestrians can see green materials, waterless urinals and naturally lit spaces with walls of high efficiency, fritted windows. Behind the scenes, the rain water capture tanks, ice storage containers and under-floor air systems are providing some of the backbone for their ecological savings.
In the short term, I see a couple of options or challenges for projects like these. One is for the architects and engineers who are tasked with making systems more visible to people in an attractive way. The other is to marketing departments and communication groups who have to find new ways of displaying and promoting important steps in sustainability so that those providing the funding dollars feel like they are getting the credit they are after.
One of the new opposing forces to the deployment of renewable energy has been dubbed “Energy Sprawl,” referring to a symptom of energy sites requiring dubious amounts of land that could purportedly threaten our natural landscape. Where NIMBY voices are troublesome, these claims are more misguided. There is no question that some renewable power options need space. Energy sources like wind and solar require land in order to build arrays large enough to make them efficient, but the real sprawling epidemic has nothing to do with energy, is much worse and has been going on unaddressed for decades: suburban sprawl. Anyone raising arms about devoting land to renewable energy should be prepared to combat the growth of our suburban communities.
Over the past half century, flight from cities has created an explosion of development in suburbia that claims more virgin land every year. As late as the housing boom that lead up to the current recession, the cost of construction, laxity of zoning laws and ease in security mortgage debt lead to new communities sprouting up across the country almost over night. The result is an ever-expanding network of roadways and a lifestyle driven by automotive travel that breeds inefficiency and waste.
There seems to be a misconception that land used for building new cul-de-sacs wrapped in colonial revival vernacular is somehow less desirable than land used for erecting wind turbines or solar panels. Virgin forest or prime farmland is consumed every year to be subdivided and turned into brand new housing stock. In her book A Field Guide to Sprawl, Dolores Hayden says “the American Farmland Trust estimates that in the United States, 1.2 million acres of farmland were lost to development every year between 1992 and 1997.”
As a point of reference, a solar farm planned for Deming, New Mexico will be one of the biggest in the world, producing up to 300 MW or enough power for 240,000 homes. If completed, the array will require 3,200 acres of land. Using the same ratio of roughly 1 MW per 11 acres of land, the 6 million acres of land consumed for homes in the 1990’s could contribute a maximum capacity of 545,450 MW (545 gigawatts.) According to the Energy Information Association, our total national power generation capacity is in the neighborhood of 995 GW (so over half of our power.)
Unlike energy development, suburban land acquisition does nothing for the natural environment. Its conception lays more roads, erects more power lines and creates more commuting traffic by perpetuating the need for more cars on pavement. The fortunate developments may only waste time, money and resources by laying new sewers while those too far from town or city centers rely instead on septic systems. Despite our best wishes, pouring Drano into a sink that leads to a leeching field is nominally the same as going outside and pouring it on the ground.
Energy installations like wind farms produce clean power and by doing so are diverting generation from sources like coal and oil that can bring damaging effects to the environment along every point of their supply chain from mining to combustion. Modern wind turbines are also usually tall enough that land beneath them can still be farmed. Though some energy arrays may pose some interference with the habitat or migration of natural species (a common attack against wind farm construction), it is estimated that in the U.S. up to 130 million animals are killed on the road every year by cars.
On the other hand, suburban plots produce nothing. They are not havens for animal habits. Unlike the land that they consume, rarely are they net sources of food, clean water or energy. An article by Dan Shapley notes that according to Census Bureau data, in 2006 nine of the ten fastest growing counties were located in the South or West in areas already stressed for the capacity of fresh water. In Dallas Fort-Worth, one of the fastest growing regions in the country, a North Texas Future Fund report states “by 2050 the [water] deficit could reach 1.1 million-acre feet per year — an amount greater than total current demand.”
Like anything else, the construction of renewable energy has its drawbacks but the argument of space does not come close to comparing to the epidemic of waste that comprises our history of limitless suburban expansion.
In honor of Blog Action Day 2009
Photo Credits: Alex Maclean & Sincerely Sustainable