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Thinking green
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - July 02, 2008)
Years from now, local governments could be seen as the heroes that saved the planet from global threats, said George Heartwell, mayor of Grand Rapids, Mich., or they could take the blame for the social upheaval that will come if they remain ignorant of environmental problems.
Heartwell was addressing the local leaders of U.S. municipalities in the audience at the Greening the Heartland conference, as well as more than a thousand of architects, educators, builders and students who also attended the U.S. Green Building Council’s annual event, held this year at the America’s Center in St. Louis from June 22 to 24.
One local leader, city of Clayton Mayor Linda Goldstein, spoke in a workshop about her city’s hopes to lead the St. Louis region in sustainability and environmental awareness.
Hundreds of U.S. municipalities have decided not to wait for the president or Congress to pass laws that would regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, renewable-energy standards and aggressive recycling guidelines. Goldstein and Heartwell are two mayors who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement as a pledge to lower by 7 percent their cities’ greenhouse-gas emissions by 2013.
Last year, the United Nations recognized Grand Rapids as a “Center for Expertise” in sustainability, making it the only city in the country to earn the recognition. During Heartwell’s tenure, the city has achieved its goal of using 20 percent renewable energy to power the city. This year, city officials set a goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2020.
Before “going green,” Grand Rapids was a city that allowed its human and industrial waste to flow into the Grand River. After a $350 million sewer-separation project, fish returned to the river, and the city began looking for other ways to improve its environment.
“I suggest the real action is to be found at the most local level of government,” Heartwell said. “Here is the nexus of hope. One city here and one city there — we will launch a movement … and take the world by storm.”
Mayor Goldstein said that as a city of 16,000 residents with a relatively small workforce and budget, Clayton is limited in the ways it can tackle large environmental initiatives. Nevertheless, she said, the city is still striving to become the St. Louis region’s leader in sustainability.
Goldstein said the city has already taken 10 of the 12 required steps in the mayors’ agreement to lower its greenhouse-gas emissions, though currently it is unable to measure its emissions levels.
Creating a baseline measurement requires computer software and an analysis of the city’s pollutants and environmental programs. The process would also require a count of the city’s trees and cars.
“We don’t have the staff time for that,” Goldstein said. However, if other cities joined together, she believes the resulting group could afford to create a position for a sustainability director who could help each city gather the necessary information to achieve a baseline measurement.
The salary for Cleveland’s director of sustainability is funded through a grant from a private investor. Goldstein said she was taking careful notes when the representative from Cleveland was explaining how the city made the position possible.
“I thought of all the exciting things a big city can do,” she said. “But I can’t create jobs like [Heartwell] can.”
However, she said, she is always surprised by the initiative that comes from the community and its businesses to get the city moving in a “green” direction. For instance, the city’s Ecology and Environmental Awareness Committee was the force behind an ordinance that passed last year. It requires all newly constructed or renovated city buildings of 5,000 square feet or more to be certified by a green-building rating system known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.
Jaime Lerner, an urban planner and three-time mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, was scheduled to be a keynote speaker and is known worldwide as a hero of democracy and sustainability. Lerner was not able to attend the conference, but attendees watched a video of one of Lerner’s recent speeches.
“Lots of leaders are very pessimistic about their cities,” Lerner said in the recording. “They believe their cities are too big or don’t have enough finances. If you project the tragedy, you’ll have the tragedy.”
As mayor, he transformed his small Brazilian city into a global leader in sustainability as it adopted the world’s first rapid-transit bus system. The system acts like a subway but without the expense of building tunnels and platforms. Curitiba’s system also runs without the help of subsidies.
Lerner’s approaches are practical ones. Instead of hiring a company to remove trash from alongside the city’s river, he “made a deal” with businesses to pay residents in food, concert tickets or services for picking up litter. Because citizens and businesses were involved, awareness of the city’s efforts to improve the environment spread throughout and unified the population.
“In every city, no matter the financial situation, you can make a change in two years,” Lerner said. “It’s not a question of money.”
For example, the city passed a law that made it illegal to build high-rise buildings away from the central corridor of the city that is served by the transit system, thus encouraging construction near the system.
Both Lerner and Heartwell emphasized the importance of earning the trust of the citizens through small projects first and then increasing the scale of projects as momentum builds.
“My suggestion for any city is to look for that low-hanging fruit,” Heartwell said. “Once you start doing it, it becomes addictive. When there’s enough awareness behind sustainability, then it gets easier all the time.”
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