Sustainable Practices

Comment

Comment by Eric Koch on March 25, 2009 at 12:37pm

http://push.pickensplan.com/group/suburbanconvertionproject

Comment by Aaron on March 20, 2009 at 7:41pm

There's a great new site on the ning network for green building professionals and students...check it out: LEEDLoop.com

Comment by Eric Koch on March 10, 2009 at 5:38pm

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090309_we_are_breeding_ourselves_to_extinction/

Comment by Ray Osborne on March 3, 2009 at 2:30pm

I started a new group on Face book for

Sustainable Communities.

Comment by Ray Osborne on March 3, 2009 at 2:27pm

I started a new group on Face book for

Sustainable Communities.

Comment by Eric Koch on January 25, 2009 at 8:32am

Choosing What Cities Will Look Like in a World Without Oil

http://www. worldchanging. com/archives/009304. html

Choosing What Our Cities Will Look Like in a World Without Oil

Sarah Kuck

As we draw nearer to reaching the point of Peak Oil, it benefits us to imagine what our cities will look like in a world without oil.
Does this conjure up images of cities turned into urban farms just to produce enough food for us all? Do we devote all our energy to growing, bartering and trading the food we grow? Or will the city become divided, with the wealthy moving to the center while higher costs of living force lower-income families to the outer-ring suburbs, where access to goods, services and transport will be limited?

If we start now, we can choose what we want our cities to look like in the future. We can make them the resilient, sustainable centers of culture, justice, art and creativity that we hope they will become.


Author and Professor Peter Newman is asking us to imagine and then get to work building these urban centers. His book and talk, both titled Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change, ask audiences to honestly look at what will happen to our cities when we reach Peak Oil. During his 90 minute presentation last night at Seattle's City Hall, Newman explained to the full house how peak oil will soon change reality as we know it; and how if we choose to make it so, we can take this challenge as our opportunity to create a functional, just and sustainable world.


Picturing a future where we do nothing resulted in some frightening scenarios: ones where we are barely getting by and injustice is running rampant. But, as Newman explained, picturing a future in which we respond to the challenge by building resilient cities results in images of a flexible and supportive, flourishing society.


In order to build the new resilient city of the future, Newman said that “we need to stop building extra urban road capacity and urban scatter; we need to start building electric renewable cities with much greater localism in the economy and infrastructure.
”

“We need both at the same time," Newman said. "Or they will undermine what we need to do together.
”

Here are a few exceptional points, summarized from Newman's worldchanging presentation:

End Agglomeration Diseconomies
The freeway is a failed technology. Freeways don’t actually ultimately help people get where they want to go any faster; they simply scatter people and economies. Freeways fail as public spaces; as infrastructure, they are dinosaurs. Their impact on cities is not good for economics or people. So we should stop building them. We should instead organize and advocate for rail systems so we can reclaim and rehabilitate our open spaces. Car-dependent cities can begin to reclaim freeways by investing in rail transit and building up local economies around station hubs.


Density, Walkability and Affordable Housing
High quality, high rise developments in the city will increase walkability, and decrease the number of trips taken by car. These developments will function best if developers work in partnership with land use planners. To end the division and disagreements that high density development creates, we have to require all developments to allot 15 percent of space to social housing, and require 5 percent of the value of a development to go toward social infrastructure, like landscaped open-to-the-public space, public art, community centers, schools, arts facilities.


Complete Streets, Smart Grids
Cars won’t go away completely, even though the oil we currently use to power them will. The cars of the future will run on alternatively produced electricity. We can link the extra energy produced from solar and wind production systems to the batteries in our cars with Smart Grids. These energy linking systems help buildings and transportation power each other. (Read more about Smart Grids on Worldchanging here and here.
)

Eco-villages colonizing the fringe
Build eco-villages on the outskirts of the urban ring. Built with their own water, power and sewage systems, we can turn the crumbling suburbs into self sustaining eco-communities of the future.


What We Need to do Now
Newman gave vibrant examples of each of these ideas happening in cities all over the world, from Seoul to London, Copenhagen to Vancouver, B.C., these cities are proving that this is possible.
All we need now, said Newman, is imagination, post oil strategies, partnerships and demonstrations, and above all HOPE!

Let’s get to work.

Comment by Faye on January 23, 2009 at 3:49pm

The Florida Alliance for Renewable Energy (FARE), with support from the Florida Municipal Electric Association (FMEA) and the Alliance for Renewable Energy (ARE) are pleased to invite you to join us for a discussion on:

Effective Renewable Energy Policies: Stimulating Job Creation, Long Term Investments, and Improving Energy Security

Featuring discussions on Feed in Tariffs, Net Metering, Rebates, and Gainesville, FL., the first municipality in the United States to introduce a Feed in Tariff policy.

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
12-7 pm in Tallahassee
Doubletree Hotel
101 South Adams Street
Tallahassee, FL 32301
(850) 224-5000

The focus of the conference is the deployment of renewable energy in Florida resulting in jobs and energy security. Experts from around the world and participants from various stakeholder organizations will discuss policies to stimulate vast investment in renewable energy to increase energy security and job creation in Florida. Building on Governor Crist’s vision of 20% renewables by 2020, this event will provide first hand experiences from Florida, other states and European countries on what policies are most effective in achieving renewable targets.

SOLAR ON EVERY ROOFTOP!

Panels will include:
· ‘Lessons from Europe and US States’ – Deployment of successful renewable policies.
· Costs vs. Benefits – The potential opportunity if policies are right.
· What energy policies will drive the market and bring jobs to Florida?
· Florida based implementation.
· Legislative Roundtable.

Key objectives:
· Explore green jobs and long term investments.
· Discuss Renewable Energy Payments, also known as Feed in Tariffs, regarding their significant potential to address climate change, create new jobs and support the renewable energy industry
· Further develop policies that have driven the clean technology markets.
· Update on the Renewable Portfolio Standard rules from the PSC.
· Strengthen and Support legislative initiatives in Florida.
· Explore various levels of initiatives adopted by utilities.
· Build coalitions and network.
· The Gainesville Solar Feed in Tariff.

Who will attend: State legislators, environmental and energy advocates, renewable energy industry representatives,local and state utilities, local government officials interested in green job economic development, nonprofits and foundations committed to a renewable energy future.

Speakers will include: leading environmental organizations, Florida State legislators, investors, renewable energy industry organizations and leading energy companies.

Featuring:
· Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan
· Florida State Representative Keith Fitzgerald
· Paul Gipe, Alliance for Renewable Energy
· Toby Couture, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
· Dr. Murray Cameron, Phoenix Solar
· Jerry Karnas, Environmental Defense Fund
· Barry Moline, Florida Municipal Electric Association
· Ed Regan, Gainesville Regional Utilities
· Christy Herig, Solar Electric Power Association
· Jerome Guillet, Head of Energy, Dexia

Please go to: www.FAREnergy.org for registration and hotel information.

Comment by Michael, Houston on November 3, 2008 at 4:30am

JOBS UPDATE
Thousands of new GREEN JOBS are now posted on GREEN JOBS NOW! group page. Join the group today and we will keep you informed. http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnowcom
Tell your friends looking for a job to sign up on the PickensPlan and upload their resume FREE at: www.green-jobs-now.com
Melissa
coordinator@green-jobs-now.com

Comment by Ray Osborne on October 21, 2008 at 2:41pm

I saw an interest in this topic and thought I would start it.

See where it goes.