This Issue

features
LEED impact categories
departments

climate change

Climate Change Conundrum

2015 November-December, climate change, LEED impact

[vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="17531" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="20974" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="10"][vc_column_text] By Mary Grauerholz [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type="row" type="full_width" text_align="left" padding_top="25"][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text] [caption id="attachment_20977" align="alignright" width="600"] In researching her new book, The Sixth Extinction, author Elizabeth Kolbert traveled to the Andes, Africa, and the Great Barrier Reef of Australia to examine the real-time impacts that humans are having on this planet.[/caption] A conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert on the subject of the health of our planet.   The world is in serious crisis. Rising sea levels, destruction of habitat, loss of farmland, and a host of other outcomes of climate change are destroying the earth’s ecology and could destroy its most dangerous interloper, homo sapiens. Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and author of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, has devoted years of travel, research, and writing to the situation and what we can do to get back on course. Kolbert will bring her message as a Master Series speaker to the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, on Thursday, November 19, in her talk, “The Sixth Extinction.” In a telephone interview from her western Massachusetts home, Kolbert says she will...

Read More

Holistic Approach

2015 July-August, climate change

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/2"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="17531" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="20195" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] By Jeff Harder 100 Resilient Cities program helps urban areas around the globe meet 21st-century challenges. [/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_column_text] Travel just about as far west as you can along Interstate 10 in Texas and you’ll find El Paso, a city of 675,000 hugging the U.S.-Mexico border. Like other urban areas around the world, El Paso strives to provide its citizens with access to healthcare and social services among its most vulnerable residents, replace aging stormwater and electrical infrastructure, plan for drought and flood, create stable, high-quality jobs, and conserve water through alternative sources. Ensuring that El Paso can thrive in the future and bounce back from whatever misfortune comes its way means solving problems that resonate beyond its city limits. “It doesn’t matter where we draw the line on the map,” says Nicole Ferrini, chief resilience officer for the city of El Paso and a founding member of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Chihuahuan Desert Chapter. “We have to deal with these things as a regional community.” [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width="1/2" css=".vc_custom_1437066654155{margin-top: 15px !important;}"][vc_single_image image="20201" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1437066357819{margin-top: 10px !important;}"]Nicole Ferrini is the chief resilience officer for the...

Read More

Beyond Platinum

2015 May-June, climate change

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][vc_single_image image="17531" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_single_image image="19718" border_color="grey" img_link_target="_self" img_size="full"][vc_column_text] By Kiley Jacques [/vc_column_text][vc_separator type="transparent" position="center" up="30"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][vc_column_text] [caption id="attachment_19720" align="alignright" width="500"] Dr. Cornelius B. Murphy, Jr., outside the Gateway Center at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.[/caption] SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry opens the doors to its Gateway Center—an unparalleled model of green building design.   I remember telling them the building had to be beyond Platinum,” says Dr. Cornelius “Neil” B. Murphy, Jr., senior fellow for environmental and sustainable systems at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York. In 2008, when interested parties began laying out what they envisioned for the school’s new Gateway Center, they met with Architerra, a Boston-based boutique firm specializing in high-performance sustainable building design. “We were considering architects,” recalls Murphy, who was ESF president at the time the building was planned and constructed, “and I remember the discussion of what we would require as a minimum for the building: ‘Given you are the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, it’s likely you’ll want a green building.’” Yes, the planning committee agreed, it needs to be green. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certification was subsequently proposed. “I remember...

Read More