The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) held "Sustainable Communities 2008," West Coast Green did its annual show in San Jose and Gov. Schwarzenegger addressed the SF Commonwealth Club on the second anniversary of AB 32.

I spoke at West Coast Green on Sustainability Dashboards with Gil Friend of Natural Logic and Peter Sharer, CEO of Agilewaves. I've known Gil since the early 1990s, in 1997 we devised the Integrated Resource Efficiency Management Plan for Willie Brown and Mission Bay in SF. I had just met Peter at the event. We had a nice full room, good questions and no margin for error in a packed 45 minutes.

CNU's morning program was brilliant, with Peter Schwarz from Global Business Network; Whole Earth Catalog publisher and The WELL founder Stewart Brand; and Smart Growth guru Peter Calthorpe all honoring Sim Van Der Ryn, the legendary green building and community designer.

Schwartz told how a broken Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and an imploding Ferderal Interstate Highway System are leading indicators of the collapse of sprawl as the uberforce of American community design.

Said CNU President and former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist "Sprawl is the number one risk factor in real estate development," he said. "The good news is that you can retrofit sprawl and make it enjoyable."

Schwartz, who co-authored some of the leading scenarios (pre-"Inconvenient Truth") on the security impacts of climate change for the Department of Defense, said that global climate change demands something akin to a world EPA.

Calthorpe, of Peter Calthorpe and Associates, told the oft-repeated truism of how cities are leading the way with sustainability policy and thought over national government with a new twist: cities are sharing best practices by traveling around and kibbitzing with one another in what he called "lateral learning."

"The feds are last to get the message," he said, and he went on to illustrate how Sim Van Der Ryn's systems thinking (and doing) as State Architect under former California Governor Jerry Brown in the 1970s--passive daylighting, active solar, social engineering, geothermal and biomass energy, and bio-retenion systems--set the stage for his firm's projects with barrier islands in Lousiana, transit villages in Los Angeles and Portland's city streets.

Most memorable was Brand's video of a just-in-time market in Mumbai, India, that is unpacked when a train comes to let it through, and then people pop down awnings, produce and wares right on the tracks seconds from when the train has rolled through.

Meanwhile, Sim table hopped, to sit with his many different admirers. Sorry I had to miss his award and hope we are able to get together soon as planned. He has been using slides from my book How Green is Your City? in his presentations, we are on some parallel paths.

And Gov. Arnold? As I said, something had to give.

The building is pending a LEED Platinum designation, the highest grade given to the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating program. It was devised by Italian designer Renzi Piano and features:

• a huge Expo-67 like green roof, with two and a half acres of native habitat for the endangered Checkerspot butterfly
• active solar and even more impressive, passive solar lighting and passive ventilation, featuring outdoor air supplied the surrounding Golden Gate Park "Virginia mated with Borneo" ecosystem (thanks Mark Reisner).
• A living rainforest display with simulated rainfall, semi-free roaming birds and lots of real humidity in a self-contained orb (pictured below).
• A bunch of eco features such as denim insulation, recycled steel structural members and guiding frogprints from points of local public transportation egress.  

I loved the covered piazza created in the center of the building. When I entered it, I was the only one in its large but cozy space. The air was fresh and cooler than the rest of the building, providing a needed respite fron the crowds of sneak peak members milling about the exhibits.

The piazza, which an attentive guide told me was created as an homage to Piano's native Italy's central public spaces, reminded me of San Francisco cafes, which have a habit of leaving their door open even on the chilliest of winter days (this was a foggy summer morning in the Sunset District, after all).

My only moment of disappointment was in the bathroom, where signs above the toilets bragged about how "these highly-efficient water conserving toilets are available for purchase for your home, too." 

Yeah, they sure are. At 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf) they are required for any new construction or remodel throughout the state. Our home 0.8/ 1.4 gpf model is nearly twice as efficient, and cost only $50 after our water district rebate.

Other than that, splendissima. 

A terrorist couldn't have planned it any better.

Hurricane Ike and its record expected 10-27 foot storm surge is headed directly for the Houston Ship Channel and the region that provides the nation's chemicals, oil refining and natural gas pipeline operational centers, it also is a major port for Midwest grain transport.

Expect gas prices to rise for weeks or months, and don't be surprised to experience gas shortages or even gas outages in parts of the country. Gas prices surged to $5 a gallon at the pump in some locations this morning already.

Though "only" a Category 2 hurricane, Ike covers a freakishly large area, with tropical storm winds extending 550 miles and hurricane force winds covering 240 miles. This will bring a forecast storm surge up to 30 feet in parts of the Texas coast, with the highest surge taking dead aim for Galveston Bay and near La Port and Baytown where the Houston Ship Channel begins.

Dr. Jeff Masters, one of the nation's leading experts, called it this morning, "poised to become one of the most damaging hurricanes of all time."  

Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff in today's Wall Street Journal called Ike's directly hitting the Houston Ship Channel "one of the nightmare scenarios in the world of hurricane watching." He said it could damage "a lot of the energy and chemcial resources we depend on in this country."

Besides the national economic damage Ike will inflict, expect massive human health and environmental consequences from the pending disaster. The region of southeast Houston and southeast Texas is home to hundreds of chemical plants and dozens of refineries, with 89 percent handling hazardous waste. The neighborhoods surrounding the channel are largely Hispanic, some by more than 90 percent.

I wonder if local Texas officials have reached out to Hispanics through media and other ways, so that they can be evacuated from what may become the equivalent of the Ninth Ward during Katrina in New Orleans. In coastal Freeport, no special outreach was made to "undocumented" communities, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

This event portends to reshape the US energy economy, disaster preparedness and the implications of climate change adaptation (see my blog entries from earlier this week).

My hope is that people make it out of there safely while there is still time.

Greenhouse gases have "lifetimes of decades if not centuries," according to Scripps Institute of Oceanography's Dan Cayan, and there is likely to be ongoing impacts at every level of culture, society and the economy.

The so-called "wicked problems" the state faces--the term taken from Dan Cayan's label of "problems that are all tangled up in different processes"--are rife.

• Water allocation, with Sierra snowpack forecast to decrease 30-90 percent from 2020 through 2090, creating a scramble for water among users. UC Berkeley's Michael Hanemann noted that the state was not measuring current diversions of water or groundwater use.
• The costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation: How expensive will it be? Who will pay and will there be a way to allocate costs equitably? 
• Communcation of both the nature and scale of the problem to the American populace, media and policy makers is a challenge since scientific data can be misinterpreted, misunderstood or downright ignored. "We're not good entertainers," Dr. Cayan ad-libbed to the amusement of the large audience of mainly scientists.
• More and more data and information is needed, according to the California Department of Water Resources director Lester Snow, to better forecast and prepare for damage to human settlements and ecosystems through climate change induced flood, drought and wildfires.

So what were some of the best ideas that came forth during the Sacramento event once the caveats cleared?

Economics professor Hanemann suggested that the state come up with climate change adaptation plans similar to existing urban water management plans. Just as the water management plans do for extreme drought, climate change adaptation plans could scope what could be done by state, regional and local government to prepare for worst-case scenarios (drought, flood, heat stroms, wildfires) in land use, transportation and public health.

ICLEI's Gary Cook outlined how that international member-based organization is leading assessments and actions plans for climate resilient communities in four US locations: Keene, NH; Homer, AK; Miami-Dade County, FL; and Ft. Collins, CO.

Art Rosenfeld, longtime commissioner of conference host the California Energy Commission, spoke on day one about how cool roofs--a very low cost or even no extra cost technology--reduces cooling use by 20 percent in homes and businesses, while reducing overall urban heat islands.

This one step taken in all new construction in the world's largest 100 cities, which at the CEC's behest California is mandating for all new and rebuilt homes next year, would save 400 billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That is equivalent to more than the greenhouse gas emissions of all nations for an entire year.

And people would pay less on their energy bills, providing a net positive financial impact immediately for all homes that use air conditioning.

In addition to state policies like AB 32, which would reduce overall emissions by 70 percent come 2050 with myriad such policies to reduce building, transportation, government and industry carbon emissions, there is no one silver bullet. 

California is beginning to demonstrate that such wicked problems must be attacked with an almost endless arsenal of research, policy, programatic, product and management innovation. 

For the rest of the nation, California and this conference can be considered a litmus test of what is coming down the road (literally and figuratively) for the US transportation, energy and building industries.

"We are a nation state, and we are able to move issues along pretty well," said CEC Commissioner James Boyd, who said the CEC put out its first report analyzing climate change impacts on state policy and resources in 1999.

Boyd outlined major policy drivers facing the state as it implements its "California Global Climate Solutions Act of 2006" (AB 32):

1. Energy security: "During the 1970s OPEC jerked our chain and the nation's economy shuddered," Boyd said.

2. Environmental quality/ fuel supply/ price volatility/ global climate change: "9/11 woke up a lot of people to the fact that people in other places are controlling something we are way too depandedant on." Besides California being such a large economy, it is the world's third biggest consumer of gasoline, Boyd noted earlier, with its transportation sector producing the biggest share of its greenhouse gases.

Dan Sperling, board member of The California Air Resources Board, gave a grim forecast of what the state, nation and world are up against in terms of energy supply and demand, and carbon emissions. 

"Over the next 10 years, the world will consume one quarter of all the oil consumed in the world's entire history. We're more dependent on few sources--nations are competing with one another."

Sperling said his agency wanted the state be more proactive in preparing for these developments: "Our number one goal is to stimulate innovation in behavior, technologies and institutions."

In terms of the state's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which has been subject to challenges by the Bush Administration EPA, California is proposing that gasoline-based transportation be replaced by a mix of at least 10 percent lower-carbon fuels by 2020. Sperling said the state is leaning toward advocating a mix of electric, hydrogen and biofuels.

California Resources Agency Secretary Mike Chrisman and Stanford professor and co-Nobel prize winner Terry Root concluded the morning with climate trends and adapation measures that will be needed to cope with the state's already shifting percipitation, rising temperatures and sea level rises.

Root summarized the loss in Sierra Nevada snowpack precipitation, the main source of California's water supply, as decreasing up to 30 percent by the 2020s, and up to 90 percent by later in the century. She also said 20-30 percent of species are thought to be at risk by the 2020s because of climate change.  

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It's so inspiring that wholistic urban sustainability is becoming a reality, and that is making carbon-reduction fun, profitable, innovative and, yes, delicious. 

My family and I took our bikes to the ferry to the sunny city and pedeled around the car-free city streets, with roller skaters, tricyclists, runners, walkers and pogo-stickers.

The Sunday Streets events was the first if its kind for San Francisco. This year Portland, Oregon, and New York City have already done the same, in the mold of Bogota, Columbia's Ciclovia. It was a big hit, stressing physical fitness at different stations along the waterfront with activities for the kids and hula hoops for everyone else. Kudos to Mayor Newsom, the department of parking and traffic that blocked off auto traffic and all the volunteers.  

Our destination was the Victory Garden in front of San Francisco City Hall, the community centerpiece of the Slow Food Nation festival.  Slow Food Nation celebrated local, organic, tasty, fair and humane American food, the largest celebration of its kind, with 60,000 attending the three-day proceedings. 

Besides the gorgeous 1/3-acre victory garden, where children and adults visibily delighted in experiencing a working food plot (200 pounds going to food banks this week alone), we went to a tasting of some of the best food purveyors in the nation Saturday evening.

Some food highlights: a truly white (clear) old vine Fume Blanc from Oregon, Rubicon's 2004 estate red, chocolate from Madgasgar, pickled vegetables, acme bread pizza, wild coffee beans from Eritrea.

I also chatted with many luminaries: Vandana Shiva, who is saving thousands of species of rice from extinction in India; John Knox, co-founder of the Earth Island Institute and Michael Dimock, of the Roots of Change fund, which helped Slow Food organize the event.

Sue Conley co-founder of the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes, CA, told me that higher energy prices have made her legendary cheese business take off even more recently.  

She opined that we are at a watershed moment, when locally produced food starts to lose its "gourmet" connotations and starts to be known as the healthy, high quality way to put our money where our mouths are, which will help local economies while preserving our valuable farm and pastureland from getting paved over forever.

It's a huge deal for design and building industries, and for regional and local governments that are either green building leaders or laggards. More on that below.

The code, announced July 17 by Rosario Marin, chairwomen of the California Building Standards Commission, would require that all new state construction be 15 percent more energy efficient 20 percent more water efficient and up to 50 percent more efficient with landscaping water design.

Some quick updates:

• It's a work in progress. Basic code language has been updated as late as July 30.
• Looks like it has the strong backing of the California Building Association Industry (CBIA)
• The announcement was met with resistance at most and indifference at the very least from the US Green Building Council, the group behind the national LEED building standards.
• The code when legally enacted will retire nation-leading green Title 24 standards with stricter energy standards

• As it now stands, cities or counties must file with the California Building Standards Committee before before the new code becomes law for their green building ordinances to become effective.

The upshot: the new state green building code has the potential to overrule stricter local green building regulations or less-stringent local exceptions, unless the regional or local government files first with the state for an exception.

Sounds like some interesting negotiations will be occurring on this...

Yesterday I visited LA's Century City and West Hollywood for meetings, and was shocked to see pedestrians everywhere, dozens of buses (the Big Blue Bus on the Westside and the red and orange Metro Bus Rapid Transit lines), as well as cyclists in bike lanes zipping up and down Santa Monica Boulevard.

The numbers from my old pals at the Bureau of Census American Community Survey support what I experienced: from 2004 to 2006 LA commuter use of public transit increased from 9.5 percent of city residents to 11 percent, which is a 14 percent total increase! Walking increased from 3.1 percent of the city's resident commuters in 2004 to 3.4 percent in 2006. The upshot: only 67 percent drove alone to work in 2006 compared to 70 percent that did so in 2004.

Mayor Antonio Vaillaraigosa urged LA residents this week to ride public transit at least once a week to help clear up the city's notorious traffic gridlock. Meanhwile, the head of the Sacramento-based California Bicycle Coalition estimated this week that bike ridership in Los Angeles County has increased 25 percent from 2007 to this year.

I was meeting separately with the Los Angeles Business Council and the City of West Hollywood to explore ways in which the LA area can get greener. We discussed many initiatives the city started or is planning, including its city-wide green building ordinance and a major solar power bond for business and residents backed by the behemoth Department of Water and Power, as well as a city sustainability summit at UCLA in November.

But I'm most excited about the visible change in LA that I witnessed and eavesdropped on: Hollywood business types were talking next to me at cafes about cycling and how the city needs more bike lanes, on Santa Monica Boulevard cyberkids were texting about where they were walking next, and for once no one ever asked me if I needed a ride down the block.

Blue sky, nice ocean breeze and people are getting out of their cars in Los Angeles, even editorials in the Los Angeles Times about the importance of eating local food: 

The times they are a changin'.

California's Air Resources Board (CARB) released late last week its Draft Scoping Plan, or what it is calling "a market-based roadmap guiding California toward its greenhouse gas emission goals."

The plan will be baked into more final recommendations by November, when it will begin to lay out what legal measures the state will take to reduce carbon emissions in 12 category subgroups, including land use (which includes transportation design).

Local and regional government is being called upon by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers to create more densely developed, better planned communities, meaning towns, cites and developments that have good public transit, walkability and bikeability so people aren't forced to drive everywhere for every need.

Transportation is the highest single category for carbon emissions in California, at 38% in 2004; unlike other categories, transportation is fast growing emissions--at a rate of 25%. In some areas of the state, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, transportation is responsible for about 50% of total carbon emissions. Other local or regional government areas targeted will be energy use, waste recycling and water use.

The state cites forecasts that global climate change can reduce California's GDP by 20 percent or more from droughts, heat waves and severely reduced snowpack, impacting everything from its massive water distribution systems to coastlines, low-lying properties and its large winter sports industry.

We're already seeing in California all-time record heat waves, droughts  and crazy numbers of wildfires. How much of all of this can be attributed to global climate change is debatable. After large parts of the state had its worst air quality on record last week from more than 1,000 wildfires that today required intervention from the National Guard, no one can reasonably argue that global climate change won't produce at least the substantial risk of significant health and economic impacts.

The AB 32 scoping plan puts climate change mitigation costs--for everything from low-carbon fuel technologies to building improvement--at between -1 and 1% of its GDP.

In terms of local and regional governments, economic costs will result from "policies to reduce (GHG) transmissions by changing how we grow and build our communities." Look for more actions like those taken by the Attorney Governor's office last year against Southern California's San Bernardino County for not including carbon emission impacts as part of planning and land use under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Also expect regional "blueprint planning networks" to take a major role in determining how carbon can be cut through coordinated scenario modeling, planning, actions and performance indictor metrics. These blueprint networks are already working with the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to make sure general plans and projects are consistent with carbon output scenarios and indicators that will be required under CEQA.

Other parts of the mix may include congestion pricing, as well as other ways to reduce indirect sources that will reduce vehicle trips, such as The US Green Building Council's upcoming LEED--Neighborhood Development standards.

On the revenue-positive side of the ledger, towns, cities and counties should look to receiving "revenue generated as part of the program that could be distributed in a way to substantially mitigate any price increases."

Local and regional governments in California are also already the nation's leading beneficiaries of tax revenues from the rapidly advancing green economy. The growth of green technologies, such as PV solar, and advanced transportation (electric and plug-in hybrid fuel technologies), as well as building products and services (architecture, construction, landscaping, consulting) are some of the hottest growth industries in an otherwise stagnant job market.

All in all, AB 32 seeks a per-person carbon reduction from 14 tons for every state resident down to 10 tons per person by 2020.

So far, regional and local governments in California are expected to make only about 1-4 percent of these reductions; the next few months will shape until 2020 how every town, city or county will be expected to contribute its part in the nation's first major systematic carbon reduction legislation.   

(Please excuse the late post).

I was struck by how much more advanced Europe is in policy as it relates to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to acheive sustainability, and that naturally includes economic dvelopment. The EU has an official mandate to use ITC to help not only reduce climate change through greater energy efficiency, but to:

"stimulate the development of a large leading-edge market for ICT-enabeled energy efficiency that will foster the competiveness of European Industry and create new business opportunities."

The event was oragnized by ACIDD, the European association for communication and information for sustainable development, and it featured 31 other presenters from Europe and Africa.

Two of my fellow presenters on my panel were notable. One was Charles Secrett, of the London Development Agency, who guided sustainability policy including but by no means limited to the congestion pricing scheme implemented by outgoing London Mayor Ken Livingston.

Though Livingston lost in a recent election, congestion pricing has been a great success reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in the range of 20-40 percent. Secrett told me it's anyone's guess whether incoming mayor elect Boris Johnson will maintain congestion pricing or Livingston's other well-laid plans for carbon reduction.

Also on my panel was Leda Guidi, head of Iperbola. She described in detail the electronic participatory democracy of Bologna, Italy, which has been garnering citizens votes and feedback on sustainability planning since 1995, with impressive participation rates (30k visits per day).

Cisco presented on its Connected Urban Development initiative which is working with cities such as San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul on everything from wireless building networks and transportation systems, to teleworking centers for commuters to use in lieu of driving. Madrid, Lisbon, Hamburg, and Birmingham, England are the next locations for pilot projects. 

A dose of realism was brought to the proceedings by Ronan Uhel from the EU's Environment Agency, as he said the EU's 27 countries and countless regions and cities will need to develop common data methodologies and processes to make these scale up across the EU.

"Stop exchanging data," Uhel told the Brussels audience. "And start sharing data, ontologies, multi-lingual websites, metadata and formats. Success will be predicated on the work that goes on backstage." 

EU Commissioner Nicholas Hanley gave paticipants the big picture of why cities should be the focus of sustainability and climate change policy engineering: "Cities concentrate the problems related to sustainability, but they also concentrate the capacity for response."