Green Flow

Last post I covered some guiding principles for urban resilience planning in the face of climate change and diminishing resources (especially fresh water and oil). Considering these guidelines, what aspect of U.S. metro development stands out as the most ill-advised and risky? Short answer: exurban sprawl.

If the "Great Recession" taught us anything, it is that allowing the unrestrained sprawl of energy-inefficient communities and infrastructure is a now-bankrupt economic development strategy and constitutes a recipe for continued disaster on every level.

"Shy away from fringe places in the exurbs and places with long car commutes or where getting a quart of milk takes a 15-minute drive," was the warning the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers gave institutional and commercial real estate investors in their Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 report.

I make the further case that the exurban economic model is an outright anachronism in the Post Carbon Institute's Post Carbon Reader, which comes out this summer from the University of California Press and Watershed Media.

Much of US "economic growth" in the 1990s and early 2000s was based on the roaring engine of exurban investment speculation with gas at historic record low prices. That bubble popped on the spike of $4 a gallon; we now are paying the piper with abandoned tract developments, foreclosed strip malls and countless miles of roads to nowhere. Gas prices are forecast to head over $3 this summer, and likely much higher when a forecast global "oil crunch" hits by 2014 or so. 

Besides the economic risks, circa-twentieth-century sprawl has destroyed valuable farmland, sensitive wildlife habitat, and irreplaceable drinking water systems at great environmental, economic, and social cost. We can no longer manage and develop our communities with no regard for the limits of natural resources and ecological systems that provide our most basic needs.

A shining alternative is metropolitan areas that have begun to plan for the future by building their resilience with economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty in mind: top U.S. metro locations include Portland, Oregon, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Denver, and suburbs such as Davis, California and Alexandria, Virginia. These communities are employing some of the following key strategies that underpin resilient urbanism:

Build and re-build denser and smarter

Most U.S. suburban and urban population or use densities need to be increased so that energy-efficient transportation choices like public transit, bicycling and walking can flourish. Multi-modal mobility cannot succeed at the densities found in most American suburban communities today. Increasing density doesn't have to mean building massive high-rises: adding just a few stories on existing or new mixed-use buildings can double population density--and well-designed, increased density can also improve community quality of life and economic vitality.

Focus on water use efficiency and conservation

Our freshwater supply is one of our most vulnerable resources in the United States. Drought is no longer just a problem for Southwestern desert cities--communities in places like Texas, Georgia and even New Jersey recently had to contend with water shortages. As precipitation patterns become less reliable and underground aquifers dry up, more communities will need to significantly reduce water demand through efficiency, conservation, restrictions and "tiered pricing," which means a basic amount of water will be available at a lower price; above average use will become increasingly expensive the more that is used.

Global climate change is already thought to be melting mountain snowpack much earlier than average in the spring, causing summer and fall water shortages. This has serious planning and design implications for many metro areas. For example, Lake Mead, which provides 90% of the water used by Las Vegas (above photo) and is a major water source for Phoenix and other Southwestern cities, has a projected 50% chance of drying up for water storage by 2021.

Focus on food

Urban areas need to think much bigger and plan systemically for significantly increased regional and local food production. Growing and processing more food for local consumption bolsters regional food security and provides jobs while generally reducing the energy, packaging and storage needed to transport food to metro regions. In Asia and Latin America--even in big cities like Shanghai, China; Havana, Cuba; and Seoul, South Korea--there are thriving small farms interspersed within metro areas.

Gardens--whether in backyards, community parks, or in and on top of buildings--can supplement our diets with fresh local produce. Denver's suburbs, for instance, have organized to preserve and cultivate unsold tract home lots for community garden food production.

Think in terms of inter-related systems

If we view our urban areas as living, breathing entities--each with a set of basic and more specialized requirements--we can better understand how to transform our communities from random configurations into dynamic, high-performance systems. The "metabolism" of urban systems depends largely on how energy, water, food and materials are acquired, used and, where possible, reused. From these ingredients and processes (labor, use of knowledge) come products, services, and--if the system is efficient--minimal waste and pollution. 

Communities and regions should decide among themselves which initiatives reduce their risks and provide the greatest "bang for the buck." Like the emergence of Wall Street's financial derivatives crisis in 2007, if we are kept in the dark about the potential consequences of our planning, resource and energy use in light of climate change or energy shortages, future conditions will threaten whole regional economies when they emerge.

Imagine if Las Vegas informed its residents and tourists on one 120-degree summer day that they would not be able to use a swimming pool or shower, let alone golf, because there simply wasn't any water left. Odds are that the days are numbered for having one's own swimming pool and a large, lush ornamental lawn in the desert Southwest, unless new developments and desert cities are planned with water conservation as having the highest design priority. 

By thinking of urban areas as inter-related systems economically dependent on water, energy, food and vital material resources, communities can begin to prepare for a more secure future. Merely developing a list of topics that need to be addressed--the "checklist" approach--will not prepare regional economies for the complexity of new dynamics, such as energy or water supply shortages, rising population, extreme energy price volatility and accelerating changes in regional climate influenced by global climate change.

Next Steps? Time to fold the climate action plan into a resilience action plan, so communities can addresses not only global climate change emissions, but also more urgent economic risks posed by climate change adaptation and resource availability.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Just watched a video of the new runaway Prius episode in Southern California from last night. The scene and its aftermath reminded me of the OJ Simpson Ford Bronco chase that was televised live after the former football star was accused in 1994 of murdering his wife and another man.

With the Runaway Prius, according to the news reports, the car accelerated by itself to 90 miles an hour and wouldn't stop, until a California Highway Patrol (CHP) car gave the driver instructions from a loudspeaker and then got in front of the car, helping brake it to a stop.

"I was on the brakes pretty healthy, it wasn't stopping or doing anything, it just kept speeding up," said the driver, James Sikes. The panicked driver called 911, and as a responding CHP pulled alongside him, he said, "I was standing on the brake pedal looking at him."

The power of such a cultural meme, happening on a greater LA freeway, starring CHPs as supporting cast, has all the memorable and dramatic emotional ingredients that can do even greater damage to Toyota, its Prius hybrid, and possibly even the alternative transportation movement.

Toyota has recalled eight and half million vehicles worldwide and six million in the US, because of unexpected acceleration, lack of braking and other safety issues. Other Toyota models are included, including non-hybrids.

In the Prius, though, we have perhaps the most known mass consumer market item that screams "green" to newbies as well as sustainability technology experts. Just a few months ago in picking the top 10 stories of the past decade in sustainability, I chose the rise of the Toyota Prius (from 2001 onward) as the green icon of the era, largely because Hollywood types such as Leonardo DiCaprio adopted the Prius as their leading eco-chic indicator.  

From the OJ chase, one lasting impression was that 24-cable news became a major media force that day, as CNN scored big audiences and even bigger mindshare in its constant coverage of OJ's cruising white Bronco, which remained as a small live inset while the network covered other news. I also recall that was the first instance I had ever heard of the word "cell phone"--they were actually called "cellular" or mobile phones before that--which OJ was talking on with the media, his mother and the police.

What will we collectively remember from the Runaway Prius event? That those newfangled green technologies are inferior to good old, safe 100% internal combustion engines? That Japanese cars are good on gas mileage, but unreliable, or worse, may have potentially fatal defects?

Only time, the whims of the general public and the marketing savvy of Toyota and its auto industry competitors already having or introducing new (Honda, GM, Nissan, Ford) hybrid models will tell. (Update: As of Tuesday night, Toyota placed a video ad claiming that it was "Committed to the Right Fix" directly before the NBC news video of the Runaway Toyota, which demonstrates a well-targeted and timely response)

OJ was eventually acquitted in a trial, but his Bronco chase firmed up the beliefs of many that he was guilty of murder, as charged. The federal government announced late
Tuesday that they will be investigating Monday night's Runaway Prius incident. 

For those who want to see more fuel-efficient and innovative transportation in this country, they have to hope that others will not categorically see things as James Sikes put it, "I will never drive that car again, period."

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

With all the efforts going into urban climate action plans and carbon reduction, will many cities and suburbs be caught unprepared for other sustainability crises, such as acute water or energy shortages?

In carbon reduction management, should efforts such as focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency deserve the highest priority, when a city such as San Francisco produces 78 percent of its greenhouse gases from transportation and only 17 percent from buildings? 

These are questions that both policy makers and sustainability planners need to consider as we move into an era of climate change compounded by either diminishing resources and/or resources that are expected to continue to have extreme price volatility, such as gasoline.  

My last post reviewed the findings of a UK industry study, partially backed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group, forecasting a major "oil crunch" by 2014-15 that could potentially mean shorter supplies and much higher prices for gasoline. Because US cities do not use oil for electric power generation (Honolulu is the only one that still does), there should be much more focus in US cities on transportation and in other key areas that will be more severely impacted by the high price of oil. Cities should look at everything from citizen and business mobility options, to supplies such as asphalt for street paving, to regional food security.

At no time has effective planning, land use and public transit been so key to ensuring economic vitality, as well as equity (access to jobs and services with transit), environmental sustainability, climate security and health. That doesn't mean that increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency shouldn't be part of every community's planning, projects and budgets. It does mean that cities will need to simultaneously prioritize action plans for carbon reduction, peaking energy and peaking freshwater, which very few are doing, outside of those involved in the Transition Town movement.

To help illustrate the complexities of what I'm getting at, consider the following example. Water use in California accounts for 20 percent of electrical power use. This energy is needed to move water supplies from places with water to those largely without or to treat drinking water and wastewater.

Renewable energy sources such as solar thermal generating plants also require great amounts of water, competing for precious water supplies that can be used for drinking water and growing or processing food.

So where do water, oil or grain shortages fit in your city's or region's sustainability plan? There are no easy answers, and metro regions and cities will want to collectively consider their own energy, water and food sources when trying to assess combined carbon reduction goals and resource depletion risk factors.

I've developed some general urban resiliency rules of thumb for an upcoming chapter in the Post Carbon Institute's Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises, which is coming out this summer from the University of California Press and Watershed Media:

1. Planning: Enable the development of vibrant mixed-use communities and higher-density regional centers, that create a sense of place, allow for transportation choices (other than private automobiles), and protect regional agricultural, watershed, and wildlife habitat lands.
2. Mobility: Invest in high-quality pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit infrastructure with easy access, shared connectivity and rich information sources, from signage to cell phone alerts.
3. Built Environment: Design new buildings and associated landscaping--and retrofit existing buildings--for state-of-the-art energy (smart grid applications), and resource efficiency, integrated with mobility options.
4. Economy: Support businesses in order to provide quality local jobs and to meet the needs of the new economy with renewable energy and other "green" technologies and services. Support local and regional economic decision-makers in adapting to the new world of rising prices, volatile energy supplies and national demographic shifts.
5. Food: Develop regional organic food production, processing, and metro-area distribution networks.
6. Resources: Drastically cut use of water, waste and materials, re-using them whenever possible.
7. Management: Engage government, businesses and citizens together in resilience planning and implementation; track and communicate the successes, failures, and opportunities of this community-wide effort.

These categories are not meant to be "checklist" items for sustainability or resilience planning, but rather lay out the relevant areas that should comprise planning for integrated metro area systems. Each metro area and every city should be looking at these factors together, in order to model how well they are prepared to collaboratively contend with risks such as:

 

1.      Changing regional or local climate: extreme heat events, floods, droughts and other extreme weather events

2.      Prolonged drought, e.g. loss of mountain snowpacks or aquifers providing water for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural use

3.      Oil crunches, including extreme price volatility; supply shocks from wars, political events, terrorism, natural disasters

4.      Food security risks from high oil prices, drought, energy-food competition (biofuels), large-scale contamination, etc.

Admittedly, the overlapping and inextricable problems that cities face today can be overwhelming, especially when budgets are tight or non-existent, and people's time is stretched to the breaking point.

Selective problem solving, such as climate action planning if it is done in isolation from resilience planning, however, may lend a false sense of security for cities on the brink of an era that promises to be very different than anything ever experienced in the past.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.   

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A new report by a United Kingdom industry taskforce predicts steep oil price rises and gasoline supply shortages by 2014-2015, which will put the global economy at similar risk to the 2007-2008 rapid rise in oil prices that helped trigger the Great Recession.

"The time period would be 2014-2015 when the oil market would be starting to experience rapidly rising prices and tightening oil supplies...It is notable that the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, is already warning of such an outcome in the 2014/15 period," says the report, "Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security," funded by Virgin Group, Arup Engineering, Foster and Partners, and Scottish and Southern Engineering.

What can cities, businesses and individuals do to prepare for such energy price volatility, buy hybrids? Actually, the report asserts, "there is real danger that the focus on technological advances in cars is making consumers and government complacent."

More urgent steps need to be taken by policymakers in particular to avert this impending crisis:

• Support greater planning and funding for public transit, including taxation to benefit public transit and allocate road space based on most fuel efficient modes (i.e., congestion pricing).
  
• Support planning for less energy-intensive forms of development (less sprawl, more transit-oriented housing, retail and businesses).
• Transition to more energy-efficient transportation fleets or vehicles.
• Coordinate policy mechanisms and organizational practices to create a behavioral shift from private car use to other more sustainable forms of mobility, including public transit, car sharing, cycling and walking.
• Encourage, enable and practice smart green city tactics: telecommuting, video conferencing and public work centers, such as those being piloted in Amsterdam with Cisco.
  

At the state and national government level, preparations for another "oil crunch" similar or worse than 2008 and 1980 should include: 

• Ending subsidies for oil in order to reduce economic dependence on oil-based industries.
• Transition agriculture and food production from operations highly dependent on the use of oil-based products such as diesel fuel, fertilizers and crop treatments, while encouraging bio-regional food production from urban foodsheds for nearby population centers. 
• Planning and support for high-speed rail networks (though this would be a longer-term preparation for post-carbon transportation era beyond 2020)

Daniel Lerch of the Post Carbon Institute authored a guidebook for cities and local government on how to prepare for an oil crisis. I have also written a study looking at US oil crisis readiness in the largest 50 US cities, "Major US City Post-Oil Preparedness Ranking" (second publication from top).

Whether, it is called "peaking oil" or an "oil crunch," many experts see total global oil production reaching a plateau of around 91-92 million barrels a day by 2012-2014 unless, as the report says, "some unforeseen giant, and easily accessible, finds are reported very soon."

With fast-growing demand for oil in developing economies such as China (which overtook the US in 2009 for total automobile sales), India and the Middle East, developed nations in North America and Europe need to consider wholescale industrial and societal shifts.

The United State and Canada in particular should start reducing oil dependency now in preparation for oil price volatility and possible supply disruptions that would force such shifts without warning, with dire consequences for the economy, nationally and locally. Many cities (New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, D.C.) are already somewhat prepared to make this shift because of infrastructure for public transit and other oil-free mobility options.

The world is heavily dependent on 120 oil fields that account for 50 percent of world production, and contain two-thirds of remaining reserves of fields in production. New discoveries of oil fields off Brazil's coast, under the Arctic and elsewhere, will not be enough to replenish the "drawdown" that is occurring. Besides, many of these fields take investments that require oil to be priced over $100 or $120 a barrel, so they will not be producing for a number of years after such investments are made: in other words, far beyond 2015.

"The challenge is that if oil prices reach the levels necessary to justify these high-cost investments, economic growth may be imperiled," says the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security.

Another so-called energy "ace in the hole," oil sands deposits in Canada, are not a viable option. Oil sands produce at least three times the amount of atmospheric carbon over conventional oil when they are processed and used, which would exacerbate global climate change significantly, while also fouling the region's water supply.

What is being raised by this report is that the era of cheap oil is over, and that the consequences will be ugly, unless we start preparing for this profound change.

"Don't let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did," said Virgin CEO Richard Branson and other corporate executives in the introduction to the report

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.



    

With the 2010 Winter Olympic Games as the setting, Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson, has invited cities including Vancouver to join a public-private consortium against global climate change. The idea is to use Branson's Carbon War Room to rally cities as a vehicle for financing and capacity building, maybe a Keiretsu among Vancouver, San Francisco, Copenhagen, Chicago, London and Portland with whoever else walks down the tarmac from a corporate jet.

Sir Richard lauded Vancouver for reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels, which it accomplished while increasing population 30 percent. According to the Vancouver Sun, Jose Maria Figueres, chairman of the Carbon War Room and former president of Costa Rica, the group is trying to, "create a new blueprint for the creation of jobs, driving economies and greener cities around the world."

The Carbon War Room wants to harness the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change. The war, according to their website, operates on "seven fields of battle": electricity, transport, built environment, industry, land use, emerging economies and carbon management.

Branson also mentioned the depletion of oil in a speech, and the need to switch to alternative fuels. A new report funded by Virgin Airlines predicted shortages of oil in the global market by 2015, a prediction made by a former Shell oil CEO and reported here previously.

It's not clear how the Carbon War Room will work with governments, whether it's cities or other government entities. An example of a project or even a potential project would make the whole thing more real.

Vancouver under Mayor Gregor Robertson vowed in October to become the world's greenest city by reducing its environmental footprint by a factor of four. Thanks to oodles of regional small-scale hydroelectric power and admirable city and transit planning, Vancouver has the lowest per-capita carbon emissions of any North American city.

South of the border Seattle, has pledged carbon neutrality by 2030, but apparently Seattle did not get the invitation, nor did sustainability focused burgs such as New York, Amsterdam or Toronto attend. Also conspicuously absent were Asian city reps. The mayor of Rio de Janeiro did attend a panel with Branson and other mayors earlier in the week.

I couldn't find an explanation about how the Carbon War Room differs from or complements such efforts as the Clinton Climate Initiative's C40 group. The C40 approach is working on all inhabited continents with some of the world's largest cities, in a very similar vein: financing a $5 billion deal in 2007 on energy retrofitting older city buildings of New York, Chicago, Mexico City, Berlin, and Tokyo, for instance.

Most recently C40 cities announced in Copenhagen the creation of a C40 electric vehicle network as part of one of the few COP-15 "wins," the Climate Summit for Mayors. 

Anyone active in the green economy is already seeing many alliances taking shape, a few which have employed savvy marketing and visible leadership. Winning green city public-private partnerships, however, will also draw upon compelling business cases and urban performance analytics while clearly putting forth their value proposition.

Richard Branson versus Bill Clinton, now there's a match that could rival the Olympics. Could a more effective approach besides individual competition be a relay or other team event, perhaps?

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.   

One of the great challenges in urban planning and green building has been material life cycle energy use--how steel, concrete and wood products are produced and transported. Add to that the decisions people make once construction is finished, and you can rightly conclude that development standards have only scratched the veneer of total energy and sustainability impacts.

In addition to material climate and resource burdens, there are myriad consequences on life-cycle energy use that arise from commuting and transit choices, food and product consumption, and building heating or cooling.

Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have devised a tool that may soon provide governments and urban planners ways with which to model complete material, building and residents' anticipated energy use.

After a proof of concept was applied to a Jinan, China, housing development, LBNL has integrated building life-cycle assessment (LCA) and urban form agent-based modeling tools to capture embodied, operational and behavioral aspects of urban form energy use and emissions.

With hundreds of new cities being planned or built in China, Indonesia and India, new tools such as LBNL's will be critical in managing and reducing the energy, climate and environmental impacts of this unprecedented urban growth era.

Adding 1.1 billion people to new or growing Asian cities will produce more than half of the world's increase in global climate change-causing greenhouse gases by 2027, according to the Asian Development Bank.

I met last week in the green hills of Berkeley with David Fridley, Nate Aden and Yining Qin at LBNL's China Energy Group offices. The team demoed their new urban form and behavior energy analysis tool, describing how they based its performance on a variety of existing approaches in urban form-related analysis and life-cycle materials analysis.

The innovative aspect to the group's project is that they combined these existing cutting-edge approaches with an extensive survey of 230 residental households in the Lu Jing Superblock.

The researchers examined where Lu Jing Superblock (built in 2008) residents worked and went to school, how they commuted, where they shopped, what kinds of appliances they owned and how they used them, and even how much meat and what kind of products they ate.

The result was perhaps the closest-yet attempt at modeling and thus being able to forecast the complete energy needs of a segment of urban population. This allows an integrated assessment of required energy supply and expected impacts far beyond a single structure, energy type or industry.

It's like Sim City, but for addressing real planning, energy, and environmental challenges, which is something I've always wanted to see.

Simulations ran through the four seasons, showing cumulative energy use based on household and individual appliance and transportation use, showing cars or buses shuttling between supermarkets, offices, schools and the Lu Jing Superblock.

Total energy use and types of energy used were continually graphed, and the final results showed a breakdown between how much energy would be used by the buildings for power, cooling and heating,  as well as for transportation, food and other areas.

The group sees the tool being used by policymakers trying to prioritize energy and climate regulations in land use, transportation, planning and energy. Urban planners are another obvious group of potential end users.

One planning issue unresolved for future iterations of the tool would be how water use and supply could be added to the analytical capabilities. Or perhaps LBNL's energy tool can be combined with a software-based supply analysis and use forecasting tool for water. Water life-cycle analysis is an especially relevant issue when planning development in areas of India and Northern China that are facing climate-related drought and water supply shortages.

Still, the LBNL effort is significant in synthesizing existing tools and approaches on urban energy use into a single model that can help guide our world as we move into what is increasingly becoming the century of urbanization.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.  

Toledo, Ohio: The first green wave?

It's time for the United States and the Obama Administration to take a stand. Either this country will become a leader in sustainability technology, services and implementation, or it will languish forever behind the European Union, China, the Middle East, South Korea and other nations.

After a promising start by the Obama administration recognizing the importance of clean technologies, particularly clean energy and transportation, we are one year later paralyzed: Copenhagen was a qualified failure, Congress has abdicated passing climate change-related regulations, and the backdoor plan for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases is being challenged in Congress.

Part of the blame has to go to the White House. During President Obama's first 30 days, a raft of new programs under the Stimulus, about 11 percent of the $787 billion dollars, were announced that would benefit clean technology research and implementation.

By April the administration moved on to health care, leaving the green economy and climate change measures twisting in the wind. Instead of bolstering the effort with statistics, stories and demonstrations of why the world is already moving toward green as the biggest next-generation economic opportunity, the US green D-Day troops landed on the beach without air cover, supplies or a mission objective.

During late spring and summer last year, I spoke with numerous administration and Congressional officials. I proposed that the administration develop and release detailed figures on where green job growth was occurring. I also advised projecting those figures into a future of guaranteed clean technology dominance, with specific stories about where record numbers of new jobs were already being created:

• Toledo, Ohio has 4 percent of its metro workforce (6,000 jobs!) engaged in clean technology production, at all levels including executive, research, marketing and labor. That's equivalent on the regional level to major industries that have picked up and left the Midwest and moved overseas.
• California's green economy grew almost three times faster than the rest of its economy during 1995-2008. That job growth was in geographic regions all over the state, including wealthy urban coastal areas as well as in less prosperous and recession-ravaged inland regions.
• The greater Boston metro area has become a hotbed for clean energy research and production through state programs and private sector collaboration, with MIT and Cambridge acting as important science and policy advancement centers.
  
• Austin, Texas is a leading center for incubating renewable research, production and deployment, demonstrating public-private partnerships and academic collaboration, with the University of Texas.

Obviously, the officials did not understand that supporting "green jobs" means more than talking up the merits of each technology, which was their tact.

They told me, "We can gather and promote those statistics after the stimulus jobs are created." Or, "The White House staff is taking up every day with health care discussions--there is only one day per month for environmental discussions, so it's not enough time." (I couldn't believe at this day and age, they failed to frame the issues as "economic development" not "environmental" issues!)

The urgency of demonstrating how the clean technology economy is taking root in many Congressional districts and media markets is evident: people just need to see what these new opportunities are without having to understand the complex technologies themselves.

Only through such visceral stories, demonstrations and a few choice statistics will the American public public and media recognize that taking on the challenges of climate change and foreign oil dependency present untold opportunities for domestic jobs and market leadership.

Don't believe that this stuff is important? Let's look to China, which now leads the world market in solar and wind technologies. Or Europe, which just announced a Supergrid project, that will combine deployment and research capabilities from nine nations for a renewable energy grid across the Continent.

New green cities are being either planned, designed and built in China, South Korea, The Middle East and even India, based on new clean tech ecosystems combining renewable energy, with water and material conservation processes, along with information technologies. It's ironic that a US-based company like General Electric needs to base one of its largest clean technology research investment in Abu Dhabi, but that's the reality of our new economic era.

President Obama and Congress need to illustrate that we are falling behind in this race for the future of our national economy, planet and local livelihoods. They need to shine a solar spotlight on this new world that is emerging all around us, in our factories, universities and research laboratories to make them a recognized engine of our regional economies.

The president can look to a US city for inspiration. Seattle has set a goal of making itself North America's first carbon neutral city by 2030, which will require a Manhattan Project-type approach among local government, businesses, civic organizations and local experts. Only through well-researched shout-outs from the bully pulpit of the Presidency will such efforts capture and sustain the national imagination.

Our past has proven that once our nation is inspired, we all can move collectively toward a common goal: Let's use our existing and expected progress in sustainability to define a future of hope and economic regeneration.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.