Urban Crisis: Poverty and Climate Change

Posted on | April 22, 2009 | Comments Off

by The World Bank

We read Nicholas Stern’s blog post, “Low-Carbon Growth: The Only Sustainable Way to Overcome World Poverty,” with appreciation and enthusiasm. It is an insightful and important essay, illuminating the bedrock recognition on which effective 21st century development efforts must build: global climate change and poverty are inextricably interconnected. The best way to break one is to bend the other.

Yet there is another dimension to this challenge: the dangers of global poverty and climate crises will be especially acute in cities because accelerating, unplanned urbanization around the world tends to concentrate low-income people in high risk areas, on ecologically fragile land, desperately vulnerable to the consequences of imminent and worsening climate disruption.

The reason is clear: more people live in cities than ever before. In 1950, the earth’s total population was 2.2 billion and New York was the only metropolis with a population greater than 10 million. In the years since, the planet’s population tripled, concentrating in cities, most of which are located in developing countries. Within a decade, more than 500 cities will have populations exceeding one million. By 2020, seven cities in developing countries will have more than 20 million inhabitants.

These are not cities with picture-postcard skylines. UN-HABITAT projects that within three decades, one of every three human beings will live in near total squalor – packed tightly on low-lying land, lacking sanitation and clean water, increasingly susceptible to the wrath of a warming world. Cities historically have been engines of vitality – crossroads of commerce and culture. Now, they are at the epicenter of climate change’s impact.

According to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the earth is likely to experience at least another century of warming. The only realistic solution for cities is stronger resilience: integrated urban planning, land use regulation, water management, infrastructure investment, and emergency preparedness. The private sector and national governments alike must support these adaptation efforts with wider access to insurance, healthcare, and the financial resources to encourage and expand effective programs.

Greater resilience is possible – and without bank-breaking expense. There’s often resistance to adaptive solutions for fear of huge costs. The best ideas, however, are not necessarily the priciest, and many are already deployed in developing cities that have little flexibility in their budgets. Durban, South Africa, for example, incorporates ongoing climate risk assessment, adaptation, and mitigation into long-term city planning.

To pilot innovative services and solutions, the Rockefeller Foundation recently launched the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network. This work emerged as one response to a consensus that communities in Southeast Asia’s urban areas find themselves in great peril. During the next three decades, 60 percent of the world’s population increase will occur in Asia’s cities and eight in 10 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change’s reach will be located on the continent. By mid-century, climate change could subject 132 million people in Asia to resurgent hunger and poverty – and a full billion could struggle to find fresh water.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s intervention is also designed to test strategies that can be adopted in other urban regions. The Asian Cities Network – an alliance of governments and donors, scientists, academics, and planners, health care and emergency service providers – will chart new approaches for cities everywhere to prepare for and recover from the global climate crisis’ very local impacts. It will link circuitry to help diverse partners and policymakers learn from best-practices. And it will aggressively court governments and donors who can bring successful approaches to scale.

We can all agree that solving the global poverty and climate crises are not contradictory, but rather complementary – and increasingly urgent – opportunities. Yet, as a global community, we must redouble our commitments to equip those most vulnerable to the three-headed hydra of climate-risk, poverty, and urbanization, especially against the backdrop of continued economic contraction. Each successive day we do not act brings us all closer to catastrophe. City by city, we can and must prepare to cope with what’s coming.

Special Earth Day Hearing

Posted on | April 22, 2009 | Comments Off

(Washington, D.C. – April 21, 2009) Tomorrow, April 22, 2009, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will testify before a joint hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. The special Earth Day hearing will focus on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The three Cabinet members will discuss the importance of ending our dependence on foreign oil, creating the clean energy jobs of the future and addressing the global climate crisis.

History of Earth Day

Posted on | April 22, 2009 | Comments Off

by EarthDay.net

Earth Day — April 22 — each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years.

History of Earth Day

It was into such a world that the very first Earth Day was born.

Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. ” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”

At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.

Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.

On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

History of Earth DayEarth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

Sen. Nelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the highest honor given to civilians in the United States — for his role as Earth Day founder.

As 1990 approached, a group of environmental leaders asked Denis Hayes to organize another big campaign. This time, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues on to the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 rolled around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.

EPA Administrator William K. Reilly with former Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day 1990. Photo: EPA History Office

EPA Administrator William K. Reilly with former Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day 1990. Photo: EPA History Office

Earth Day 2000 sent the message loud and clear that citizens the world ’round wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy.

Now, the fight for a clean environment continues. We invite you to be a part of this history and a part of Earth Day. Discover energy you didn’t even know you had. Feel it rumble through the grass roots under your feet and the technology at your fingertips. Channel it into building a clean, healthy, diverse world for generations to come.

Whole Foods Announces Alternative Energy Investment

Posted on | April 22, 2009 | 1 Comment

AUSTIN, Texas (April 21, 2009) – Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) today announces a comprehensive energy commitment that more than triples the number of stores with solar panels, extending its commitment to offset 100 percent of its use of non-renewable electricity with wind energy, and investing in energy reduction opportunities while retrofitting existing stores with energy efficient lighting, equipment and mechanical components.

“Whole Foods Market is thrilled to set the environmental bar even higher by pioneering the development and deployment of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power,” said Lee Matecko, Whole Foods Market Global Vice President of Construction and Store Development. “We are also reducing energy consumption in new and existing stores with some exciting innovative technologies that are making a real difference.”

Solar Power

Whole Foods Market recently contracted to add solar to more than 20 locations; including existing installations, solar will be brought to the rooftops of more than 30 of the Company’s stores nationwide. With an installation at its Berkeley, Calif., store in 2002, the Company became the first retailer to introduce solar power as its primary lighting source. Including potential future rollout phases, Whole Foods Market hopes to have close to 70 total locations with rooftop solar panels, close to one fourth of the Company’s total number of stores.

Wind Power

Continuing its industry-leading commitment to wind power, Whole Foods Market is once again offsetting electricity use in its North American locations in 2009, bringing its four-year total purchase to 2 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy credits from wind farms. This is the equivalent of the electricity used in more than 160,000 homes in one year. To create a similar environmental impact, more than 220,000 cars would have to be taken off the road for one year. In December 2005, the Company became the first Fortune 500 Company to offset 100 percent of its electricity use with wind energy credits.

Energy Savings and Emissions Reductions

The Company is also expanding its comprehensive energy approach to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by using on-site alternative and renewable energy sources for new stores while reducing energy consumption in existing stores and facilities.

Whole Foods Market hosts and pays for the energy delivered by an on-site hydrogen fuel cell at the Glastonbury, Conn., store. The fuel cell, a first for a supermarket, generates 50 percent of the electricity and heat and nearly 100 percent of the hot water needed to operate the store. Plans are in place to add fuel cells to other locations such as the Dedham, Mass., store opening this fall. The Dedham store will be the first supermarket in Massachusetts to generate nearly 100 percent of its electricity and hot water onsite with an ultra-clean 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) fuel cell.

“We will be avoiding half, to almost all of the power needed by traditional grid sources in several locations by using fuel cells and waste-to-electricity technologies,” said Kathy Loftus, Whole Foods Market Global Leader of Sustainable Engineering, Maintenance and Energy Management. “We are also retrofitting existing stores with more energy-efficient equipment – from state-of-the-art, energy-efficient lighting to more sophisticated energy controls and monitoring systems – and have saved in excess 15 million kWh of electricity in the past two years, reducing energy consumption up to 20 percent for certain stores. This is only the beginning for Whole Foods Market – we have so much more in the works to accomplish.”

Whole Foods Market has set internal energy-reduction goals for new stores as well. The company is a steering committee member of the Department of Energy’s Retail Energy Alliance and is participating in programs to develop buildings that will use 30 to 50 percent less energy than required by code, as well as working with manufacturers and partners to develop increasingly higher energy efficiency equipment and systems for supermarkets.

Green Certifications and Tracking

Environmental certifications for new Whole Foods Market stores have been abundant in recent years, reflecting the Company’s commitment to energy-efficient designs and equipment. The Company opened the first-ever LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified grocery store in Sarasota, Fla., in 2005. Since then, four other Whole Foods Market stores have earned LEED certification: Austin, Texas; Pacific Coast Highway/El Segundo, Calif.; Lakewood/Dallas, Texas; and most recently, the Chicago South Loop store, which earned LEED Gold certification.

The Lakewood store in Texas is also the first store to receive the EPA GreenChill’s Silver Level store certification. The award is granted to food retailers with environmentally friendly refrigerant usage.

Whole Foods Market is developing an inventory of scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, which will help track and report natural gas and electricity consumption, refrigerant leaks and trucking fleet emissions. The Company is also setting internal goals for greenhouse gas reduction in future years by using smart design and energy reduction technologies.