TransCanada Threatens Landowners with Eminent Domain!

Read the article. This epic, defining, 21st century battle over the Keystone Pipelin continues.

Making Sustainability Legal?!

This is the topic of a new Sightline Institute's initiative. 

This Sightline series puts the spotlight on cases where we can make sustainability legal by changing existing regulations and developing pragmatic money-saving proposals. We can single out outdated rules and present smart solutions that align with today’s reality. Clear away this sort of debris, and the Northwest can grow into a region that’s more affordable, fair, and sustainable.

Business Case for Sustainability

Bob Willard, the consumate business sustainability researcher, consultant, and advocate estimated the business advantage in his 2002 book, The Sustainability Advantage. Now, its updated cousin, The New Sustainability Advantage summarizes the advantage as follows:

The New Sustainability Advantage has a recalibrated, and more compelling business case for sustainability strategies than described in its 2002 version. Based on recent case studies, it shows that if a typical company were to use best-practice sustainability approaches already being used by real companies, it could improve its profit by at least 51% to 81% within three to five years, while avoiding a potential 16% to 36% erosion of profits if it does nothing.

Read more at the publisher's site or on Bob's site.

World Resources Simulation Center

The World Resources Simulation Center (WRSC) is a large format visualization and simulation facility. As part of our ongoing research and development efforts, we are compiling an inventory of world resources to help analyze and assess historical and projected trends.

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GENI - The Sustainable Development World Power Solution

The Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) Initiative focuses on linking renewable energy resources around the world using international electricity transmission.

Decades ago, visionary engineer Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller developed the World Game simulation, posing the question:  How do we make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through

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Green Euro-Urbanism - Lessons from Beatley

Two Books by Timothy Beatley at each end of the first decade of the 21st century extract lessons from leading european cites on sustainable urban development:  (1) Green Cities of Europe, 2012, and (2) Green Urbanism--Learning From European Cities, 1999. Excerpts follow:

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Resilient Cities - Peak Oil & Climate Change

Excerpt: 

. . . oblivion is [not] necessarily the destiny of urban areas. Instead, . . . intelligent planning and visionary leadership can help cities meet the impending crises, and [the book looks] to existing initiatives in cities around the world. Rather than responding with fear (as a legion of doomsaying prognosticators have done), [the authors] choose hope. First, they confront the problems,

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Nature in the Biophilic City - Beatley

Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the "greening" of cities. But too often, he notes, in Biophilic Cities, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough,

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Future of Transportation from RMI - WED, Feb 15, 11am MST

FROM THE Rocky Mountain Institute's Website:

Transportation WILL Change: Are You Ready?

The U.S. burns 13 million barrels of oil a day for transportation at a cost of $2 billion, half of it imported. That oil dependence also incurs hidden costs totaling roughly $1.5 trillion a year or 12 percent of GDP. Making transportation oil-free by 2050 can

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Can Industrial Expansion / Agricultural Preservation Land Use Conflicts be Resolved Sustainably?

Wow. Good one Sylvain (see Linked in Discussion and referenced issue-Port vs Ag in Metro Vancouver). What a classic land use conflict: current suicide economy conflicting with old economy and "no change" populist sentiment! Framed as it is, the winner will just be whoever has more political muscle and legal rights/resources. But that won't necessarily be the "best" solution for society (if that even matters any more).

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Real Transdiciplinary Sustainability Training

There are a few programs that have evolved over the years that would be widely viewed as delivering serious sustainability training. Such programs deliver the accurate understanding and powerful skills required to design effective solutions and authentic progress. These would include at the top of the list, the Masters in Leadership for Strategic Sustainability, Blekinge Instiute of Technology, Karlskrona (TNS), the Columbia University masters and PhD programs of its Earth Institute, and the Presidio Graduate School Sustainability MBA and MPA programs.

Now there is a new program on the global "block," the Master's (and PhD) in Programme in Social-ecological resilience for sustainable development at the Stockholm University and its Stockholm Resilience Center (research for governance of social-ecological systems). Check it out. It's a systems-based transdiciplinary integration of relevant knowledge and research methods for advancing understanding and practice.

Largest Utility-Scale Solar Project Yet - Kern County CA - Pushes Solar Frontier with Thin Film Tech

Solar Frontier and enXco, an EDF Energies Nouvelles Company, have signed a module supply agreement for up to 150 megawatts peak (MWp) of Solar Frontier’s CIS solar modules. A firm order for 26 MWp was completed and delivered in the last quarter of 2011 for the Catalina Solar Project located in Kern County, California. When completed, the project is set to become the world’s largest CI(G)S installation and will rank among the largest solar installations of any type globally.  Read more. . . .

SMART STARS - Is Transformational Sustainability Transportation Planning Possible?

Most approaches to sustainable transportation involve incremental "greening" changes to the existing auto-dominated transportation-land use-urban form systems and settlement patterns. Often they are no more than minor per-capita VMT reduction programs that will only slightly slow the systematic increase in carbon, thereby NOT contributing to climate change solutions or adaptation. As such, they also do NOT address other planning, livability,

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Is CSR Counterproductive; Implications for Planning?

The following editorial by Chad Park, Executive Director of The Natural Step Canada, appeared in the Corporate Citizens Mediaplanet Special Report in the National Poston December 28, 2011.

It makes the case that CSR is simply part of business as usual. I think it raises a challenge to public planning: what is the equivalent to business' CSR and a transformational response?

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SF Leading the Way on Sustainability

As nice as it is that San Franicisco (SF) is leading the way on sustainabilty in the most recent round of city rankings (see also the Seimen's Green City Index) how close is SF or any of the other cities to sustainability? How would we know? This is the million dollar question of sustainabilty. Without being able to answer it, one has no legitimate claim to sustainability assessment. (see other S2030 Clips post here).

Green Gone Wrong?

The marketing review (Amazon) for the book says the following:

In Green Gone Wrong environmental writer Heather Rogers blasts through the marketing buzz of big corporations and asks a simple question: Do today’s much-touted "green" products—carbon offsets, organic food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homes—really work? Implicit in efforts to go

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Strategic Sustainability Resources

If you missed TNS Network USA's Dec. 6th (2011) introductory webinar on strategic sustainability, here are a few additional resources for you that would be good substitutes.

• A 30-minute introductory recorded webinar (watch mins 1-30) from the Director of TNS’s Masters’ program in Leadership for Strategic Sustainability at BTH. Go Here: Planning for Sustainable Development--Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, (you sign on as a guest using your own - (No password is needed) and click the play arrow in the middle of the screen.)

• The slide deck of the presentation is available here.

• Resources from a recent half-day workshop on Strategic Community Sustainability Planning for South Bay (SF) planning professionals are here. In particular, I recommend the following:

• Workshop Follow Up Resources Document, provides links and short discussion of a range of next-step resources, mostly no-cost. See also the list of references in the Resources Section at the end of the Presentation, Part 1 (see link below), pages 92-93.

• Mock South Bay Community Strategic Sustainability Plan, refines and extends the results of the workshop exercise into a partial mock plan to illustrate how a strategic approach begins to differ from a traditional approach.

• The powerpoint presentations for the Strategic Community Sustainability Planning Workshop and some other resources are also on the main page.

If you want to follow up with TNS in particular, I highly recommend checking out the TNS Network USA's and TNS Canada’s work; in particular,

• TNS Network USA - Communities

• Home page TNS Canada

• Sustainable Communities TNS Canada

• A 2-minute Vid on TNS (very good/entertaining)

OK, that does it. Comments, questions, etc. are always welcome.

Of course, i also highly recommend the 1-hour e-learning course (or 3-hour, but the 1-hr was recently updated) too.

Rio+20 & Urbanization

Volume 2, Issue 22 of Rio+20: Making it Happen focuses on the impact of rapid urbanization on the sustainable growth of cities, one of the seven priority issues to be addressed at Rio+20.  Meanwhile, the Second Intersessional Meeting of Rio+20 will soon take place on 15-16 December 2011. This newsletter highlights the compilation document and events relating to the meeting. It also features the launch of the   Portuguese version of the Rio+20 website, an event hosted by the Mayor of Rio de Janiero.

Available at: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=40

Stakeholder Forum

For a Sustainable Future, just published a pocket guide to sustainable development (see home page), and has resources on the Blue Economy, the Bonn Conference, the Earth Debates, and EarthSummit 2012.

2010 Had Largest CO2 Emissions Ever

See the NYT Article:

Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

The trend bodes ill. According to IPCC modeling, which may be conservative, the business-usual-scenario (BUA) will result in a global temerature increase of 6 degrees C by the end of the century), an increase associated with catastrophic climate change for human society. Most scientists fear average warming scenarios above 2 degrees, some consider anything above 1 degree will have highly likely catastrophic results. The IEA's annual report released last week took the position that humanity has five more years to get on a sufficient 100+ year mitigation path or perilous climate change will result.