“Cities are the largest thing humans build," said Richard Register as he kicked off the Ecocity World Summit. Register convened the first Ecocity summit in 1990, founded Ecocity Builders, and has been a tireless proponent for re-imagining man's largest creation for nearly twenty years. He cautioned however, that “if we continue adjusting to the things that are wrong, we’re in trouble.”
“Better cars make worse cities,” he points out. By getting faster, quieter, and cleaner, we only come to rely on them more. And if building more freeways were the answer, LA would be a paradise to drive in, says Register, not a snarling traffic nightmare. But cars are not inevitable, either. “After all, we’ve been building cities for 4500 years, and cars for only a 100 years.”
Instead of designing our cities to accomodate automobiles, we should design them to work in tandem with the natural environment, he says. This is the vision behind the Ecological City.
One of the world's top economists offers a blueprint for sustainable development and alleviating global poverty by highlighting the importance of unifying knowledge and getting the UN's Millenium Development Goals on the US national agenda.
Jeffrey Sachs is Director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, author of The End of Poverty, and most recently,Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. Among his many accolades, in 2005 he was noted by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential world leaders. He is well known as an unconventional and impassioned economist and a leading expert in poverty alleviation, and globalization, who advocates combining economic development with environmental sustainability.
Scientists at this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston unveiled the first comprehensive global map of humanity's cumulative impact on the oceans.According to the new study, which is the first to integrate multiple drivers of current human impact on oceans, the ocean is confronting a "multi-jeopardy" situation. “The water is becoming warmer, circulation patterns are changing in unpredictable ways, and oceans are becoming...
In order to foster collective and meaningful state leadership on clean energy issues, the National Governors Association (NGA) has committed to a new initiative that aims to promote, accelerate, and dispel myths about a clean energy future.
NGA's "Securing a Clean Energy Future" (SCEF) initiative, was introduced in September 2007 by NGA Chairman, Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), and now guided by a task force of eight governors from the following states: Minnesota,...
Lyndon Rive and his brother Peter were looking for a way to make a difference. After years of running software companies, they wanted to get into solar – and their idea has made their company SolarCity the largest residential solar-installer in California, as well as the fastest-growing solar installation company in the state just two years, and earned them a prestigious Energy and Environment Award from the Aspen Institute. In this interview Lyndon talks about finding the...
“We are now looking at a food situation unlike any we’ve seen before,” Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute announced this morning at a press conference on the fallout from skyrocketing food prices around the world.
“We’re seeing spreading social unrest and instability in scores of countries around the world. The list of failing states is getting longer year by year, and is likely to increase dramatically as governments face potentially...
Touted as the richest, most efficient source of biofuel on the planet, some see algae taking off where food-derived biofuels went wrong. In practice however, there are still many pressing questions as to...
The world famous Aspen Institute put on its first ever Environment Forum last week in collaboration with National Geographic, and opened with a host of high-caliber speakers talking about their ‘Big Idea’...
One of the most exciting things to hit green financing is the country’s first ‘Green Bank’, and, as Arcwire found out in our interview with founder Peter Liu – it’s not just for the big guys....
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