Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, published an enlightening piece called Indulging In Carbon on TomPaine.com last week. His basic message: while buying carbon offsets is a great way to supplement clean energy for dirty energy, the act does nothing to reduce our wasteful ways. I agree wholeheartedly. In his article, O’Donnell quotes The Netherlands-based Carbon Trade Watch, which warned in a recent report that:

From flights, to four-wheel drives, to [gasoline], carbon offsets provide a false legitimacy to some of the most inherently unsustainable products and services on the market. What’s more, the costs of this purchasable legitimacy are often largely shunted onto the consumer, who effectively ends up paying for the greenwash. These companies also benefit because offset schemes place more of the focus on the consumers’ responsibility for climate change—at the expense of examining the larger, systemic changes that we need to bring about in our industries and economies.

Ouch. Carbon Trade Watch’s conclusions are undoubtedly true. But, I feel the “green” movement is still in a nascent stage, and that the people who by carbon offsets are also the same people who practice more sustainable lifestyles. Maybe I’m wrong, or haven’t been exposed to the relative masses of people buying carbon offsets as “indulgences” as O’Donnell suggests. But in the long term, O’Donnell is correct. He says, “At the very least, we ought to recognize that consumer-based carbon offsets aren’t going to be enough to address the very real problem of global warming. After all, the U.S. emits more than 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases each year—and we need to reduce those emissions, not just offset increases.”

The public can’t be convinced by those leading the movement to reduce our harmful ways that carbon offsets are the solution to climate change. Unfortunately the “we” who will recognize this and the “we” who need to reduce emissions are not one in the same.  What a shame it will be if the education process teaches another wrong instead of raising awareness of the fundamental source of climate change.

A friend of mine sent me this today; I was a little surprised I didn’t see it earlier. Point is you should sign it and get all of your friends and family to sign it or the world will melt – no joke. The first link is to Gore’s latest blog entry, in which talks about the Oscars An Inconvenient Truth won and what the next steps are for us to tackle global warming. The second link is to the actual action step I ask you to take.

Our Next Step

Send a message to Congress

Thanks.

I’ve been waiting to hear about something like this for a while. The 2010 Imperative is an effort to make systemic change in the design and planning community. According to the website, “The 2010 Imperative Global Emergency Teach-In addressing global warming and climate change is an interactive web-cast broadcast live from New York, reaching more than 500,000 students, faculty, deans and practicing professionals in the architecture, planning and design communities in both North and South America.” Where do I sign up?

The website also asks, “Are You Being Trained for the World You Will Inherit?” The question is pertinent on so many levels, not just sustainable design. If educators were forced to answer “yes” to this question our children would be better trained in other areas like math and social responsibility too. The weight upon our shoulders is so grand.

From the website, the goal of the 2010 Imperative is:

To successfully impact global warming and world resource depletion, it is imperative that ecological literacy become a central tenet of design education. Yet today, the interdependent relationship between ecology and design is virtually absent in many professional curricula. To meet the immediate and future challenges facing our professions, a major transformation of the academic design community must begin today. To accomplish this, The 2010 Imperative calls upon this community to adopt the following:

Beginning in 2007, add to all design studio problems that: “the design engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel.”

This is key!

By 2010, achieve complete ecological literacy in design education, including:  

• design / studio
• history / theory
• materials / technology
• structures / construction
• professional practice / ethics

By 2010, achieve a carbon-neutral design school campus by:

• implementing sustainable design strategies (optional – LEED Platinum / 2010 rating)
• generating on-site renewable power
• purchasing green renewable energy and/or certified renewable energy credits (REC’s, Green Tags), 20% maximum.

Bold but achievable goals. I truly hope the architecture, planning and design communities embrace this, or a similar challenge. Fundamentally changing the way humankind approaches the built environment is vital to a sustainable future. The time truly is now.

This is a great comic from Ward Sutton. The original can be found here.

Maybe we should keep polluting! This photo is from St. Louis Mayor Slay’s website.

In my class, we’re currently debating the social responsibility of beer and oil companies as related to the effects of their products. Scary thing is there’s someone in the class you thinks global warming is a load.

Uh . . . It’s incomprehensible to me that an educated human being could actually not believe in global warming but that’s just me. Of course I know people who truly believe everyone in America starts life with the same chance at happiness and success. There must really be something in the water.

A St. Louis company has bold plans to capture the community’s landfill gas and use it to heat homes. “For the last decade, gas produced from decaying food, paper and grass clippings at Fred Weber Inc.’s Maryland Heights landfill has helped Pattonville High School save thousands of dollars a year on its energy bill.” But now, Weber wants to use the gas to heat the homes of the area’s 27,000 residents.

In his article, Jeffrey Tomich explains that landfill gas, “is composed mostly of methane and carbon dioxide and is created by the decomposition of organic material. The quality of gas depends on many variables and typically contains about half of the energy of natural gas used to cook with or run a furnace.” Using less efficient sources of energy generally isn’t encouraged unless the potential energy is already being created. In this case, and in the case of solar power, the issue isn’t creating fuel to power society but instead capturing the fuel already being created by our waste, or nature in the case of solar power.

Tomich also points out that, “The use of landfill gas as an energy source began in the late 1970s. The idea is gaining momentum amid higher prices for fossil fuels and growing concerns about climate change, said Rachel Goldstein, a manager of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program, part of the agency’s climate change division.”

Why not concentrate resources on other sources of energy, say renewable or more efficient ones? Because, according to the EPA, “the use of landfill gas as a renewable form of energy because it helps reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and contributor to smog, and spares emissions of other pollutants by reducing consumption of fossil fuels. The methane not used to generate energy is either vented into the atmosphere or burned at landfills to minimize emissions.”

This isn’t the only landfill project in operation in the country. Last year, 423 landfill gas projects, “generated 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 75 billion cubic feet of gas in 2006. Those projects prevented the release of 19.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of tailpipe emissions from 14 million vehicles, according to EPA figures.”

That is simply amazing. The impact of our lifestyles is magnified even through our garbage. That’s why it’s more important than ever to be conscious of what you use, how you use it and what you throw away.

“A study by the world’s leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought.” Moo ha ha ha.

An article published on the Guardian Unlimited website discusses the latest draft of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to the article, the report “shows the frequency of devastating storms – like the ones that battered Britain last week – will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.” Well, at least the conclusions weren’t dramatic. Other facts brought to light include:

• 12 of the past 13 years were the warmest since records began
• ocean temperatures have risen at least three kilometres beneath the surface
• glaciers, snow cover and permafrost have decreased in both hemispheres
• sea levels are rising at the rate of almost 2mm a year
• cold days, nights and frost have become rarer while hot days, hot nights and heatwaves have become more frequent

These guys are so overreacting! The article concludes with this: ‘However, there is still hope, said Peter Cox of Exeter University. “We are like alcoholics who have got as far as admitting there is a problem. It is a start. Now we have got to start drying out – which means reducing our carbon output.”‘ Well put.

Regardless of the severity of global warming, the impact of humans on mother nature is clear. We consume too much, dispose of too much, waste too much and want too much. There’s nothing wrong with consumerism if it’s done responsibly. Shop online at websites that sell environmentally friendly products and raise your awareness of the impact your actions have on the environment. That’s the only way we’re going to avoid a terrible future, no matter how far off in the distance it is.