Global Green News
Member's Project '08: Help Us Continue to Rebuild New Orleans Green!
As a member of the environmental community, you have demonstrated your support for advancing sustainable communities. I’d like to invite you to help the people of New Orleans, by supporting a vision for the green rebuilding of that city that can serve as a model for rebuilding all of our cities. Today, you can take a simple step that could dramatically increase Global Green's ability to complete this critical initiative.
Please take just a minute to nominate Matt Petersen's "Rebuilding New Orleans Green" project for Members Project '08. American Express is offering $2.5 million dollars in funding total to support exciting and innovative ideas that make a difference in the world. If the project finishes in the top 25, we have a chance at winning $1.5 million dollars.
HOLY CROSS PROJECT SITE UPDATE
Global Green, in partnership with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, chose to build its green affordable housing development on a site that is immediately adjacent to the Mississippi River in the Lower Ninth Ward. At approximately 7 feet above sea level, this half city block is on the highest ground in New Orleans, and should therefore be safe from future hurricane storm surges.
In selecting a site next to the river, however, Global Green is encountering lead contamination - an additional hurdle to sustainable rebuilding that tens of thousands of sites in the city are also burdened with. Global Green has met the challenge of cleaning up a contaminated site in a sustainable way head on: rather than simply scrap the contaminated soils into a dump truck and ship them off to a landfill in someone else's community - usually a low-income and/or minority community without the power to protect themselves from toxic imports - Global Green has chosen to keep the soils on-site, but to do so in a way that ensures that they are safely sealed off from the community and the environment.
Young Ambassadors of the Arctic Witness New Cracks in Fragile Ward Hunt Ice Shelf
Resolute, Nunavut – An international coalition of children visiting the high Arctic witnessed first hand the latest dramatic development of climate change on July 22, when a four kilometer section broke off the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. The children, assembled as The Young Ambassadors of the Arctic are part of the Global Green USA and Green Cross Pax Arctica '08 expedition.
JOHN EDWARDS SURVEYS 9TH WARD 'GREEN HOME'
TIMES-PICAYUNE. FRI, JULY 25, 2008. By Nicole Dungca
During his second visit to New Orleans this year, former U.S. Sen. John Edwards on Thursday toured a green home in the Lower 9th Ward and held a news conference to talk about efforts to combat climate change. Edwards will co-chair a national climate initiative that will focus on influencing civic leaders and lawmakers to push environmentally-friendly legislation.
Edwards, who last visited New Orleans in January when he announced he was dropping out of the presidential race, was joined in a news conference by Global Green USA CEO Matt Petersen, who spoke of the dangers facing coastal cities across the country.
GLOBAL GREEN HELPS N.O USE LESS ENERGY
2THEADVOCATE.COM. JULY 25, 2008. By Amy Wold
Urging the use of more energy-efficient homes and discussing how to cut climate change pollution are parts of a new national initiative announced Thursday to reduce global warming-related pollution.
“New Orleans is a front line for sea level rise in this country,” said Matt Peterson, president of Global Green USA.
Reducing the amount of global warming pollution could help reduce the projected sea level rise if nothing is done, Peterson said.
California Building Standards Commission Votes to adopt the nation's first statewide green building code
"California continues to be a national leader in addressing climate change. With the adoption of the new standards, builders and local governments have a sound foundation to create greener communities in the state." said Global Green staffer Walker Wells, an appointed member of the Green Building Technical Advisory Committee that helped develop California’s green building code.
NEW ORLEANS REBUILD EFFORTS GOING FOR LEED PLATINUM
INHABITAT. JULY 9, 2008.
The opportunity to rebuild New Orleans as an international example of sustainability comes in the aftermath of what is increasingly being recognized as the tipping point for global awareness of climate change and its devastating impacts. Global Green is committed to helping New Orleans rebuild and to use the national and international attention on the city as a wake-up call to push urgently for solutions to global warming. Global Green is accomplishing this through many initiatives including The Holy Cross Project which is going for the USGBC’s highest LEED certification.
GRANT TURNING CITY ONTO SOLAR POWER
TIMES-PICAYUNE. JUNE 29, 2008. By Molly Reid
Gathered around a mock roof in the middle of a workshop at the Louisiana Technical College Jefferson campus this week, 13 potential solar panel installers analyzed a quartet of photovoltaic panels mounted in a continuous row. The group had spent the past two days in class learning the basics of solar technology installation, and they seemed ready to put their skills to use.
The training course, the first of its kind in the New Orleans area, was partially funded by a $200,000 grant from the Department of Energy, which was given in June 2007 to a total of 13 "Solar Cities" across the country to encourage the use of solar power. The grant was divided between the city's Office of Recovery and Development Administration; the New Orleans branch of Global Green USA; the Alliance for Affordable Energy, which organized the training course; and New Orleans-based sustainable design consultancy FutureProof.
ARCTIC SEA ICE MELTING FASTER THAN EXPECTED
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR. JUNE 12, 2008. By Peter N. Spotts
Arctic Ocean sea ice – one of the most visible indicators for global warming – may be headed for another record-breaking summer decline.
If the pattern continues, new research suggests, its warming effect could reach up to 900 miles inland, melting permafrost and potentially altering weather patterns at lower latitudes. As of June 7, preliminary data show that the vast expanse of ice at the top of the world is some 55,800 square miles smaller than it was on the same date last year, according to University of Colorado researcher Sheldon Drobot. In May, sea-ice extent was slightly large than in May 2007. But the melt rate during the month – some 3,000 square miles a day – was faster, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
The ice’s seasonal shrinkage in 2007 smashed records, reaching a September minimum of 2.6 million square miles – some 23 percent smaller than the previous record, set in 2005. If it sets another record this year, it would mark the fifth season of record declines since 1998.
Holy Cross Project Fundraising Campaign
We have completed construction on the first single-family home and have 4 more to go - plus the apartment building - to help families who lost their homes, and set a new standard for healthy, energy-efficient affordable housing in New Orleans, and the country. YOU can help make a home a reality for those who need it most, the displaced families of New Orleans.
GLOBAL GREEN SEES RISE IN N.O.'S ECO-ACTION
TMES-PICAYUNE. MAY 24, 2008. By Molly Reid
Global Green USA and its New Orleans office last week celebrated the official opening of their first home in Holy Cross.
The house, built to platinum standards under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, will serve as a visitor's center and informational resource for residents interested in the rest of the Brad Pitt-sponsored Holy Cross project.
That effort will include four other single-family homes, an 18-unit apartment building and a community center.
For Matt Petersen, Global Green president and chief executive officer, and Beth Galante, New Orleans Global Green executive director, the grand opening was not just a landmark in the Holy Cross project, but also in the organization's history. After more than two years spreading the green word in New Orleans, the environmental nonprofit is seeing its dreams of a sustainable future for the city start to materialize.
HOLY CROSS PROJECT IS GREEN INSIDE & OUT
WASTE NEWS. APRIL 28, 2008. By Chrissy Kadleck
Avocado-painted walls in the living room are just one obvious sign that the first home of the Holy Cross Project is categorically green. This innovative two-story, three-bedroom home is not only a showcase of best practices in green building and materials, but also a model for environmentally friendly decor that is stylish and affordable.
Designed as a model of sustainability for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, Global Green's Holy Cross Project is a prevately funded mixed-use residential development and one of the first new home construction projects to be built in the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the most decimated areas from the levee failure after Hurricane Katrina.
ON EARTH DAY, L.A. PASSES A 'GREEN' BUILDING LAW TO CLEAN THE AIR
LOS ANGELES TIMES. APRIL 23, 2008. By Margot Roosevelt
Los Angeles embarked on one of its most ambitious projects to combat global warming on Monday, becoming the biggest city in the nation to impose "green" building rules that would potentially cut millions of tons of pollution over the next decade.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring builders of large commercial and residential developments to adopt such measures as planting drought-resistant landscaping and using recycled materials and energy-efficient heating, cooling and lighting.
Noting "the Los Angeles tradition of smog and sprawl," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, wearing a green necktie in honor of Earth Day, signed the new law on a sunny terrace flanked by two model condominium high-rises, the Luma and the Elleven, off Hope Street in downtown, which were built to strict conservation standards.
The mayor has pledged to reduce the city's carbon emissions 35% below 1990 levels by 2030, an effort that will also require a crackdown on the city's coal-dependent municipal utility and a move toward electricity from renewable sources.
"We look toward the future through a greener lens," Villaraigosa said, "after decades of poor policies that neglected environmental concerns."
GLOBAL GREEN HOUSE UNVEILS ECO-FRIENDLY DECOR
TIMES-PICAYUNE. APRIL 12, 2008. By Renee Peck
Back in 2006, when we were rebuilding our house post-Katrina, the emphasis was on hurricane-resistant construction: SIPS panels and trusses, paperless drywall and borate barriers.
No one was talking VOCs or BLUwood, tankless water heaters or low-flush toilets.
My, how things have changed. If I had it do to all over again -- and luckily I don't, because who would ever go through all that again -- I'd get not only a strong house, but also a green one. In the past couple of years, green building and eco-friendly decorating have come of age.
Global Green and Domino magazine show how comprehensively and affordably it can be done in a new house in the Green Village going up in Holy Cross. The project, you'll recall, was designed by a New York architectural firm chosen competitively by a group that included actor/activist Brad Pitt. The Home Depot Foundation is the major underwriter. Ground-breaking was back in August; this week, crews were putting the finishing touches on things.
21ST CENTURY SHOTGUN BLENDS TRADITIONAL & MODERN
TIMES-PICAYUNE. APRIL 10, 2008. By Doug McCash
The design of the Global Green model home in Holy Cross is smart. I'm not talking about all the futuristic energy saving features; I'm just talking about the appearance.
To do its job, it had to be jazzy enough to draw attention to itself, but stay pretty much within the scale and prevailing taste of the neighborhood. I think it does both.
The general design is a two-story stack of interlocking boxes, open from front to back like an old-fashioned shotgun. The most striking feature is the conflicting roof angle. The slope of the main roof faces south so the solar panels can best soak up the rays. The New York-based architects -- Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman -- sloped the front porch roof in the other direction just to add some variety. I like the zigzag effect.
SCHOOL SAVINGS SPROUT FROM GLOBAL GREEN
NEW ORLEANS CITY BUSINESS. MARCH 3, 2008. By Stephen Maloney
A.P. Tureaud Elementary School on Pauger Street is a whole lot greener today even without a new coat of paint.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Global Green U.S.A. designated Tureaud as its first Green Seed School in June and immediately went to work on the 69-year-old Seventh Ward building.
The International School of Louisiana and Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School have also been named Green Seed schools. Program director Beth Galante said more schools will be added as work progresses.
Each school will receive up to $75,000 from a $2-million grant Global Green obtained from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Relief Fund in September 2006.
Building a new home while dreaming in green
SACRAMENTO BEE. January 14, 2008. By Ngoc Nguyen
Annica Hagadorn is carefully building what will become more than just a rural dream home, nestled among pine trees near Grass Valley.
Instead of granite countertops or hardwood floors, she's installing more Earth-friendly cork flooring. She'll have solar panels on the roof to generate all of the electricity she'll need – which won't be too much, she hopes, given the energy-efficient appliances and a thick layer of insulation around her water heater.
Even the house, with its southern exposure, is positioned to make the most of nature's lighting and heating.
Like Hagadorn, more and more homeowners and buyers are interested in Earth-friendly dwellings as new materials and designs and big potential savings on energy make "green" homes more attractive to average buyers.
Small City, Big Impact: How West Hollywood is casting itself as a green leader
NEWSWEEK. Oct 18, 2007. By Andrew Murr.
Being green means different things in different parts of the country. In St. Louis, Seattle and other places, eco-friendly construction standards apply only to city-owned or city-funded buildings. In Boston and a few other cities, green construction codes also apply to major commercial or residential developments.
So which American city thinks it can lay claim to the most comprehensive green building standards? Look west to tiny city of West Hollywood, Calif., a 1.9-square-mile patch of Los Angeles with 37,000 people, making it the city with the highest population density west of the Mississippi. Starting October 1, every private and public development must meet the city's ambitious new green building requirements. The policy includes new construction, rehabs and additions. The only exemptions: duplexes and single-family homes. Requiring so many of the city's real estate projects to meet green building standards puts West Hollywood in the forefront of the move to thrust eco-friendly design closer to the mainstream of architecture and planning.
Pitt envisions day when energy bills will be ‘useless'
TODAY. AUG 27, 2007. By Mike Celizic
Brad Pitt wants to make energy bills go away, and he doesn’t think that’s an outlandish pipe dream. In the second part of an exclusive one-on-one interview with TODAY’s Ann Curry, he showed how the new houses he’s helping to build in New Orleans will make a giant stride toward that goal.
The actor and activist sponsored a design competition for affordable apartments and houses along with Global Green USA. With the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina arriving next week, work on 18 apartments and five homes is nearing completion. Global Green is constructing the homes, which will be sold to residents, with preference being given to former residents of the neighborhood.
Pitt Power: Actor's fame helps build the first house in the Holy Cross affordable-housing project
TIMES-PICAYUNE. AUG 22, 2007. By John Pope
…Pitt showed up to check on the first house in a project he has been helping with his money and the power of celebrity. Accompanied by neighborhood residents and representatives of Global Green USA, which is sponsoring the initative, and the Home Depot Foundation, an underwriter, Pitt strolled through the two-story house, which will have solar panels that could reduce utility bills by 75 percent.
When Pitt emerged to face reporters in an open-sided tent nearby, he pronounced himself pleased with what he saw. The 1,400-square-foot house is designed to be a prototype for affordable homes for people whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding.
Brad Pitt aims to keep focus on Katrina recovery
REUTERS. AUG 21, 2007. By Russell McCulley
Pitt was in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood to tour an ecologically sustainable single-family being built by Global Green USA, an environmental group he backs.
The actor praised the house in the Holy Cross area of the ward as a “small victory” for efforts to rebuild the city, but said it’s hard to find an overall victory when you see how slowly everything is still moving. And Katrina was a man-made disaster. This house is a man-made solution.”
The house that Pitt toured, loosely modeled on the distinctive New Orleans “shotgun” style of long, narrow homes, will generate almost all of its electricity from 28 roof-mounted solar panels, said Global Green USA president Matt Petersen.
Pitt's Green Building Project Begins
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. MAY 10, 2007. By Stacey Plaisance
With a brass band accompaniment, developers in this city’s devastated Lower 9th Ward celebrated the start of construction Thursday on an environmentally friendly new home, based on the winning design in a competition started by Brad Pitt.
The home will be made with energy-saving material such as metal roofing and recycled textiles.
“Hopefully this can be a model for the level of redevelopment that can be done here,” said Matt Petersen, president and CEO of Global Green USA, the environmental group working with Pitt on the project.
S.F. MAYOR TOUTS 'GREEN' GOAL IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. AUG 3, 2005. By Ilene Lelchuk
Standing next to some solar panels on the roof of the unfinished Plaza Apartments, where 106 new studios for poor individuals are under construction, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that the city was the first in the nation applying high environmental standards to all its new affordable housing developments.
That means solar panels, recycled building materials, energy efficient appliances, bamboo floors, paneling made with recycled paper and wood products, more natural light and better insulation.
The nine-story Plaza Hotel, expected to open in November on the corner of Howard and Sixth streets, is Newsom's model. The builders say 94 percent of the building materials so far have been recycled from landfill and from the old two-story residential hotel that previously stood there.
"Cities are consuming 75 percent of the Earth's national resources and in turn contributing to 75 percent of everything that's wrong with the global environment," Newsom said. "That being said, it seems incumbent on us as mayors at the local level to recognize our responsibility to address the issues of global warming, environmental justice and stewardship."
Go Vertical, Young Green
LA WEEKLY. April 28, 2008. By Judith Lewis
With each passing hour in the United States, 365 acres of open space — wilderness, countryside, farmland and native habitat — disappear under the foundations of brand-new houses. ...Unlike so many other ecological nightmares these days, however, this one has a solution: apartment life. Where once the nature-lover’s imperative was to carve out a space in the wilderness and get off the grid, many now realize that polluting the air on long commutes and paving over open space so you can live on it is fast becoming unhip: The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club now hand out pamphlets and fliers on "smart-growth" and "transit-oriented" housing; New York City is heralded as a haven of greenness.
And density is the new Rocky Mountain high. "At a certain density you have many more opportunities for the kind of shared infrastructure that saves resources," says Ted Bardacke of Global Green USA, an affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, with offices in D.C. and Santa Monica. "Whether it’s heating or cooling or composting or [wastewater] recycling, as you get closer together and start linking apartments up it gets cheaper to do everything." Because apartments share walls, they also share heat in the winter and insulation from the heat in the summer. And unless you’re on the top floor, you don’t have a roof. In terms of maintaining a comfortable indoor temperature efficiently, he says, "that’s a major difference."
5th World Water Forum prepares its launch
Building on the success of the 4th World Water Forum held in Mexico City three years ago, Istanbul will host the 5th World Water Forum from 15 to 22 March 2009. Known to be the most important event on water in the world, World Water Forum 2009 organizers expect an attendance of over 15,000 people from 150 countries to discuss the strategies and solutions regarding water in the world. Turkey is known for its rich history in water resources, culture and technology and strategic tri-partite cooperation between the General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
In preparation for the World Water Forum, a presentation on the Istanbul Water Consensus will be held in Singapore from 3 to 4 July 2008 in Macedonia during the World Cities Summit to plan the themes and topics under discussion in the World Water Forum.
Spring Valley Weapons Search to Continue
WASHINGTON POST. May 30, 2008.
The cleanup of World War I chemical weapons buried under the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington could last three more years, as crews search for more shells and remove tainted soil, officials said yesterday.
The Spring Valley cleanup began in 1993, after a construction crew uncovered buried shells from a former testing ground for chemical weapons near American University.
Russia opens 4th chemical weapons destruction plant
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE. June 17, 2008.
Russia opened a fourth plant Tuesday to destroy its chemical weapons stockpiles, which are the largest in the world.
The destruction facility, located near the site of one of Russia's seven major chemical weapons arsenals, will help accelerate an ambitious effort to fully eliminate the stockpiles in less than four years.
The plant near Leonidovka in the Penza Oblast holds 7,600 tons (6,885 metric tons) of VX, sarin, and soman nerve agents, about 17 percent of Russia's declared chemical weapons stockpile, according to Global Green USA, the Washington-based affiliate of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International environmental organization.