3Qs with Myles Lennon of Urban Agenda

New York City has set ambitious plans for greenhouse gas emission reduction — 30% by 2030 (and 30% by 2017 for all city properties and the major universities).  But if all the initiatives involved in greening the city — energy auditing and retrofitting buildings, installing new lighting and heating and cooling systems, planting more trees, and upgrading public transportation, to name a few — if all those started tomorrow, there would be a crippling workforce shortage. 

Myles Lennon is working to make sure that when the city is ready to go green on a big scale, there will be a skilled and able workers to take on the challenge.  Lennon, a graduate of Brown with a background in organizing and international development, is the Senior Policy and Research Associate of Urban Agenda, an organization that applies action, research, and coalition-building to advance social, economic, and environmental justice.

“A couple years ago, it became apparent that green jobs were the jobs of the future,” Lennon said.  To that end, Urban Agenda convenes the local chapter of the Apollo Alliance, a national coalition of environmental, labor, and community activists that develop and advocate for sustainable energy policy.  And Lennon is one of the leaders of the Green Collar Jobs Roundtable, an impressive coalition that is creating a policy road map for workforce development and training in New York City.

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

I grew up in Queens right by the Long Island Expressway.  There were no trees and just a little park and two huge malls.  There was little green space and a lot of smog coming off the Expressway.  So ever since I was young, I was aware of environmental injustice.

Later, when I was working in Providence, I would pass through this bus station where there were many young people heading to and from public schools, and not a park in sight.  It was extremely dirty — I can’t even begin to describe it.  We were surrounded by buses, which are a symbol of good urban development, but they created so much smog.

For the young people of color who lived in this neighborhood, that was their environment, that was what they saw every day.  The bus ride that I took became a metaphor for the ride that so many others took from that dirty place to prison.  That’s poetic and abstract, but it was very real to me.  I saw the link of how people of color and young people are treated systemically in our society and how we treat our environment.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

I could easily name someone well-known — but my former roommate and good friend, Tom Lyons, was really critical about the way I consumed, and he inspired me early on, and continues to inspire me.

He made me conscious about the everyday things that I had never begun to think about, like the little plastic caps on cardboard orange juice containers.  I’d throw the whole thing into the recycling without making the effort to cut off the caps.  Or when I did the dishes, I’d run water and try to do it as quickly as possible, but he said, Why don’t you soap up the dishes before running the water?

The biggest thing was the temperature of our apartment.  In New York City, we don’t have control over the heat in our apartment.  The building I grew up in was terribly inefficient.  We’d have fans going and windows open in the winter because the heat was so set so high.  In fact, my parents still do.  I took the heat for granted.  When I moved to New England, I expected it to be warm inside when it was cold outside.  I hated Tom — he kept our place so cold.  He challenged the level of consumption that I was comfortable with and what I considered “normal.”  I realized that making those kinds of changes isn’t about making real sacrifices — it’s about changing what you believe is normal.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I eat a local, vegan diet, so I’m not dependent on the inefficient dairy and meat industries.

I do not use any new plastic bags, ever — there are a few that I’ve been reusing for years now.

When I do the dishes, I soap them down first and don’t run the water while I’m washing.

And as for what I don’t do, I could make a much better effort at unplugging electronics when I’m not using them.

3Qs with Dan Handeen of the University of Minnesota

The building industry has a nasty impact on the planet.  One of the most common building materials, concrete, is alone responsible for 5 to 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions (!!).  Dan Handeen is working to change this.  A Research Fellow at the Center of Sustainable Building Research in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Dan holds a Master of Architecture degree from the institution and a long-standing dedication to sustainable design and construction.

One of the projects he’s worked on is the Athena EcoCalculator, an application that allows architects and designers to analyze building materials based on their environmental impact.  Unlike other tools, which categorize materials according to attributes — whether they’re recycled or locally sourced — but say little about their cradle-to-grave impact, the EcoCalculator factors in information through the entire lifespan of materials, from extraction from the earth to transportation to disposal or recycling.  The power of the tool is that it makes a complex set of information accessible and easy-to-use, encouraging and enabling architects to make wise, eco-conscious decisions.

Dan is also an assistant project manager to the University of Minnesota’s Solar Decathlon team.  Students compete in the biannual contest to make a small house that is heated, cooled, and powered entirely on the sun’s energy.

He grew up on Moonstone Farm outside of Montevideo, Minnesota, on land homesteaded by his great-great-grandparents in 1872.  In the 1980s, his parents switched from raising soybeans to grass-fed beef because the latter had less of an impact on the land (“Cooking Naturally at Moonstone Farm”).

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

Growing up on a farm, I was actively exposed to relationships between natural elements, which became my foundation for looking at the world at a holistic level.  Then I took a permaculture course and learned about the role of humans in constructed systems, and how one aspect can have influence the other.  I got into home building for a small company and it was like, Holy crap!  I was seeing all these wasted materials.  It kind of drove me crazy.  And it got me into architecture.  In architecture school, there was a seduction of high tech materials that were going to save us from global warming.  I started to realize that lower tech things are going to save us in the long run.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

Van Jones, obviously.  I think he should be Secretary of Energy.  He understands the human relationship component in sustainability.  Janine Benyus, a biomimicry guru.  And people just doing cool stuff in the back yard, like urban chicken farmers.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I bike or bus to work.  I compost.  I eat beef only if it’s from my parents’ farm.  On the other hand, I fly a lot for my job.  And I really like shoes.  Tennis shoes — Nike, Adidas, Pumas….

3Qs with Alma Hecht of Second Nature Design

An urban garden cracks the concrete shell and gives the earth space to breath. “We’ve created so much hard space,” Alma Hecht, a sustainable landscape designer and owner of Second Nature Design, said. “Urban gardens are opportunities to open up the earth and allow it to rejuvenate.” In the last two years, Alma’s San Francisco-based firm has won a half-dozen awards in recognition of her innovative and socially responsible approach to creating pockets of green for lucky urbanites.

Alma’s philosophy is in part inspired by Cradle To Cradle, a 2002 book manifesto extolling an ecological approach to design and industry that emphasizes products that continue generating value throughout their lifespan — and beyond.

A self-described “dumpster diver,” Alma sees the beauty in the unusual and reuses materials and objects in a myriad of unexpected ways, like remaking used steel into “laundry grove” for carbon-free clothes drying. She avoids using new materials, even sustainable ones like Trex, a decking material made from recycled wood and plastic. “What happens when the next person moves in and tears it out?” she asks.

In one concrete-covered backyard, she had a mason break up the concrete into the size and shape of stepping stones; in another, she reused concrete to build raised vegetable beds.  A mason she was working with was flabbergasted when she asked him to do this — why not save on labor and put in new blocks? — but when he saw the finished garden, he admitted the aged concrete looked better.

“And it saved me from trips back and forth to the dump and the outdoor store,” he said, “it saved on all that gas.”  He’s such a convert, he said he’d suggest reusing concrete to other clients.

The beauty of Alma’s approach is that she not only recycles and limits the use of new materials — avoiding the associated carbon footprint — but she gives people like that once-doubtful mason more work.  A job turned green, and you know how I feel about those.

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

It happens every day.  But looking back, I remember having a garden on Lumi Island [in Washington’s Puget Sound] in my twenties, picking lettuce and peas while salmon that our friends caught cooked over coals buried in the sand.  Later, when I studied horticulture, I began thinking I want all my gardens to have food in them, even if it’s as simple as a pot of thyme.  Ideally, every garden should have an apple or orange tree.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

I’m not purely green per se.  I’m for a balance of all things, so I filter so many different viewpoints into what I do and define my process through that. I’m inspired by Obama, Judith Larner Lowry, the owner of a seed company that sells native and heritage seeds.  I’m inspired by permaculture [an agricultural system that mimics natural ecologies], and Bernard Trainor [the owner of a sustainable landcaping firm based in Monterey Bay, CA]. I heard Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s speech at the 2007 West Coast Green Conference and that was very inspiring. And then Al Gore — you’ve gotta love him although he really pisses me off with all those big houses!

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I walk and ride public transportation as much as I can.  I shop at local farmer’s markets and buy second hand goods as much as possible.  I don’t like new stuff — except underwear and shoes!  And so, where do I take the black eye?  That’s what I call it.  Well, I just drove fast down to L.A. in my Prius.  I got 43 miles to the gallon but I know I could have gotten 50 [if I’d driven slower].  But who wants to be stuck on Highway 5?

3Qs with Peter Mandelstam, BlueWater Wind

Prominent supporters of renewable energy make strange bedfellows.  What other cause could unite a former Texas oil tycoon, an Oakland-based community activist, and the billionaire mayor of New York?

Each is driven by a unique hierarchy of goals, including weaning the U.S. from dependence on foreign oil, reigniting the country’s manufacturing sector, creating fair-wage jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and, in at least one case, ensuring a long-lasting political career.

Peter Mandelstam, the founder and president of BlueWater Wind, a company that develops offshore wind farms in the Northeast, came to the green movement through what might be termed “environmental altruism” — the desire to heal the wrongs done to the planet.  He founded the Solar Technology Institute, a nonprofit that worked to get solar panels installed in developing countries.  But in the mid 1990s, he began to consider the economics of renewable resources.  He didn’t foresee the cost savings associated with solar power to reach the potential scale of wind.

“I was interested in improving the lives of the greatest number of people,” he said.

“In 1998, the entire wind industry was producing just 11 megawatts of electricity.  Last year, it was more than 5,200.  It’s gone from a tiny, fringe, alternative source to a mainstream utility of scale.  It’s the very thing I wanted to happen.  I’m proud that the work we do [at BlueWater Wind] is part of this larger movement.”

Today, BlueWater provides “tens of thousands” of coastal residents with access to clean, renewable power, at a cost that doesn’t fluctuate.  Mr. Mandelstam is a leading figure in the wind industry.  He regularly appears before Congress to advocate for tax benefits for wind power, and to remind law-makers that while the rising price of energy matters, it’s the “capital ‘C’ Costs” of energy sources that we must also take into account: energy security, the assault on the planet, and public health problems associated with environmental issues, like high rates of asthma.

As an environmental activist, businessman, and policy advocate, Mr. Mandelstam exemplifies 21st century climate leadership.

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

I remember the date of the article — September 11, 1989 — it was in The New Yorker.  Bill McKibben, “The End of Nature.”  It was the most unique modern-day philosophical meditation on the environment, comparable to Silent Spring [a 1962 book by Rachel Carson] and Thoreau.  It changed my life.  I realized the Earth is in deep trouble and I started working in the environmental field.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

All of my life, I’ve been inspired by Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, political leaders who understood every voice counts and who built movements based on concerted action.  I’m inspired by 19th century naturalists, Thoreau and Emerson.  And in the modern environmental movement, Bill McKibbens got me started.  And Al Gore is inspiring.  I recently reread Earth in the Balance and was again impressed by how ahead of his time he was. Recently, at a small event, I had 5 or 6 minutes with him.  I told him I’d reread the book and I mentioned the problems he had warned we’d be facing — more intense storms, energy security. He smiled — he knew I really had read it.  I give him credit for being right and being early.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I drive a Prius and take mass transportation to work.  I buy 100% wind energy to power the office.  I’m a vegetarian.  And as for what I don’t do — I take airplanes for long distances, though for my frequent trips to Delaware [where BlueWater is developing a 450 MW wind farm project], I travel by train.

Photo of Mr. Mandelstam via NPR.

Reading List:

• Bill McKibben, The End of Nature: the series of articles in The New Yorker was later published as this book. Abstract of the first article here.
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring: also check out “The Story of Silent Spring”
• Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (online resource)
  
• The Thoreau Reader (online resource)
• The Essays of Emerson (online resource)

3Qs with Josh Dorfman, The Lazy Environmentalist

Josh Dorfman is an environmental renaissance man: he’s taking action on climate change through paths that range from business to book-writing to biking.

“It can be a pain in the butt to go green,” Dorfman said.  His philosophy is that people want to make changes for the good of the planet but they won’t want to deal with inconveniences and expenses.  And they don’t have to, as he explains in The Lazy Environmentalist, and its sequel, The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget, to be published next year.  His philosophy extends to his company, Vivavi, which sells stylish, sustainable furniture and accessories for the home.

Last week, Dorfman participated in the Climate Ride, a bike trip from New York City to Washington DC, to raise awareness and funds for climate change.  Dorfman rode as spokesperson for the FilterForGood campaign.  He says he agreed to support the campaign because its environmental goal — to reduce plastic bottle waste — is a non-negotiable step to reducing our carbon footprint.  Moreover, as a self-proclaimed Lazy Environmentalist, he appreciates that the campaign asks for a change from ordinary people that is easy and cheap: filling reusable bottles with filtered water.

“Most Americans are not in this environmental dialogue,” Dorfman said, “but campaigns like FilterForGood bring them in.  It’s a simple step to make a difference.  It can be integrated into daily life.  That’s the Lazy Environmentalist point of view.”

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

It was 1995, the year after I graduated from college.  I was living in China, teaching English, and thinking about a career in diplomacy.  I worked part-time at a Kryptonite bike lock manufacturing facility in Nanjing.  In a call back to Kryptonite headquarters in Boston, I said, “Guys, there’s 10 million bikes in the US and 1 billion in China.  We should be selling the locks here.”  They ended up opening a factory in southern China.  In the parking lot of the Chinese headquarters, there were all these Mercedes and expensive cars.  I realized that, although they were Communists, they had a lot of pride in their cars, and it wasn’t about bikes — it was about cars.  With the economic boom, there would be millions more of them on the road.

I thought, What in the world are we going to do?  I’m not an environmentalist — but you don’t need to be one to see what’s going to happen. Whether I believe in global warming or not, this is going to be bad.

I returned to the US, got an MBA, and my focus shifted to this post-globalized world, where business anywhere is going to effect the world.  I thought about it for 5 to 6 years.  Frankly, I was scared, freaked out, and angry.  There was a lot of resistance to taking steps to deal with the environmental crisis.  Six years after coming back from China, I was tired of being angry.  I decided I was going to try to make the green lifestyle attractive so that it’s not about guilt and not about values.  My message was simple: “Why don’t you check it out?”

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

I experience ups and downs.  Sometimes I’m inspired and then I’m tired and nervous because I’m not seeing change happen fast enough.  But in my research for The Lazy Environmentalist books I found thousands of innovators and entrepreneurs working to develop solutions.  In the newspapers, environmental news is doom and gloom.  But I’ve discovered so many people who are involved in making green awesome.

I’m also very inspired by Van Jones.  I saw him speak in March.  Van is the man.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

My apartment runs on wind energy, which I buy through Con Ed.  So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

I use low-flow shower heads.  Everyone should have one.  Best bang for your buck, man.  Reduces heat, energy, and water bills.  I also use a low-flow faucet aerator.

I don’t own a car.  And I don’t really consume much — hey, I’m a lazy guy.

And the way I don’t?  I love cheeseburgers.  Yeah, I eat meat.

3Qs with Dr. Nancy Anderson of The Sallan Foundation

The Sallan Foundation, led by Dr. Nancy Anderson, is unique in the green movement.  As an operating foundation, it doesn’t give grants.  Instead, it promotes sustainable cities through education, outreach, and advocacy.  A sustainable urban environment has energy-efficient buildings, transportation, and infrastructure: in industry parlance, this concept is known as “high performance.”  The Foundation supports many events to foster the exchange of innovative ideas and best practices, and commissions research, including “Decoding the Code,” an in-depth examination of New York City’s 2007 “green” building code revisions.

Dr. Anderson, the Foundation’s founding Executive Director, has created an excellent website that is rich with topical information on emerging green issues.    She is one of the best advocates for high performance urban systems in the nation’s biggest city.  A constant presence and frequent speaker at green events, her commitment and enthusiasm is infectious. 

Her passion for the city runs deep: she was raised in Brooklyn and has lived in Manhattan ever since.  She serves on the Steering Committee of the New York City Apollo Alliance, which brings together environmental, labor, and community activists to develop and advocate for sustainable energy policy in the US, and she chairs the CUNY Building Performance Lab’s Stakeholder Consortium, a cross-sector coalition that was convened to address the sustainability of New York City’s buildings.

Before joining the Foundation, Dr. Anderson spent twenty years in New York City government, most recently as an environmental adviser to city comptrollers.  She also worked in the city’s Sanitation Department, where she worked with communities to decide on locations for waste management facilities and sewage treatment plants.  “I got the real benefit of witnessing the interface between communities and city government,” she says, “and I saw how communities and government can work together.”

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

When I first came to work in the city government at the Sanitation Department, which was part of the newly formed Environmental Protection bureau, I told all my friends, “I have this great new job!”  People would look at me funny.  “Environment?  City?  How can you put these two words together — environment in the city?”  That was a fair question.

There were two things that I realized.  First, environment is everywhere — air, water, natural resources.  And second, most people live in cities and the environmental impact of cities on the planet is big.  And it goes the other way: it is absolutely necessary for cities to have clean air and water. In New York City’s case, overwhelmingly our drinking water comes from other parts.  Also, what the city does with its waste materials is important — we send most of ours elsewhere.  That was my epiphany: that environmental protection matters for the city.  The French poet Rimbaud said, “Life is elsewhere.”  I learned the opposite.  Environmental life is right here.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

I’m inspired by governmental scientists like Jim Hanson, who has taken what he has learned as a scientist and stepped out of his role as a government bureaucrat in a bureaucracy that has been very hostile and has become a global source of information and encouragement to do the right thing.  And he has done so facing real potential negative risks for himself and career.  It think that is admirable and very brave.

I’m also inspired by [New York] Mayor Bloomberg.  He didn’t come in as an environmental champion.  He got it on the job.   He was willing and has been able to mobilize resources to say, “I got it now and I’m going to do something about it.”

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

I don’t own a car and I wouldn’t buy a car.

I don’t use air conditioning at home unless it gets above 90 degrees, and then I give up and turn it on.

I love to travel and when I travel to faraway places, I take a plane, and I know that adds to my footprint.  But on the good side, if my destination is less than 500 miles from home then I use alternative transportation — I usually take the train.

To learn more about some of the things Dr. Anderson spoke about, check out:

• My post about “Trashin’ the Big Apple,” a short documentary that looks at the life cycle of waste in New York City.
• Dr. James Hansen, the climate scientist and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia professor, who was censored by NASA.
• Mayor Bloomberg’s policy road map for New York’s sustainable future, PlaNYC 2030.

3Qs with Michael Silberman of 1Sky

The 1Sky campaign, a coalition of environmental organizations, leaders, and everyday people fighting for “bold federal action” on climate change by 2010, has devised innovative ways to inspire, motivate, and engage Americans. They’ve put out a call for short video messages for our next president, created a simple way to communicate with the candidates, lent support to the Green Jobs Now national day of action on September 27th, and collected nearly 75,000 emails of supporters.  They also maintain a blog.

Michael Silberman, 1Sky’s Internet Director, is uniquely equipped to help build a national, Web-powered movement to combat climate change.  His experience straddles the virtual and the environmental: he is a co-founder of EchoDitto, an Internet communications strategy firm, who graduated with dual degrees in Political Science and Environmental Science from Middlebury College and cut his teeth on Howard Dean’s ground-breaking presidential campaign in 2003.

“1Sky takes the view that climate change cannot be solved from an environmental standpoint alone,” Michael said, “It’s a global and societal issue.  Its impacts are felt across culture, class, and age.  We can’t approach climate change in the same ways that we attacked the environmental problem, with legislation like the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.  We need to build a movement that combines personal commitment, coalition-building, and legislation.”

Next week, Michael will take part in the Brita Climate Ride, part of a three-person 1Sky team.  Support their effort here.

Michael recently sat down with me to answer a few questions — three, to be exact — for the first in a 2050AD series with climate change innovators.

1. What was your environmental epiphany?

Between high school and college, I spent a semester studying resource management in Utah and southern Arizona.  It gave me an appreciation for the natural landscape and how people use it.  It’s not just the beauty, but the resources, and tensions between human needs and desires, and the preservation of the land.

2. Who or what are you inspired by right now in the green movement?

There’s a leadership void right now, and a lack of inspiration and trust in our political leaders.  But the youth-led climate movement is very inspiring.  It’s pragmatic, optimistic, and efficient.  Organizations like the Energy Action Coalition, which has registered one million young voters and is building a movement of young people who will vote for clean energy, is working with a proven concept.  They’ve been doing this work for years, and it shows the power of young people to inspire.

3. What are three ways you actively reduce your carbon footprint and one way you don’t?

The way I don’t is all the flying I do for my job.  But on the upside, at EchoDitto, as consultants we write it into our contract that our clients must share the cost of carbon offsets for our air travel.  And as for how I do actively reduce my carbon footprint: first, I don’t have a car. I made the conscious decision to live in an urban environment where I wouldn’t need one.  Second, I’ve been a vegetarian for more than twenty years.  Third, I’m very good at turning off the lights.  Oh, and I take short showers.