Partnerships between the environmental community and leading manufacturers are among the vital ways to stop global warming. As I stated in this column’s earliest weeks, if we are to succeed in our quest to stop global warming, we must make the solutions cultural. Doing so involves driving the debate so that the phrase Stop Global Warming becomes common parlance, just as Acid Rain was 20 years ago in North America and western Europe.

In capitalist economies such as the western world has, manufacturers and their retail partners are large contributors to the culture with their products and advertising methods. Neither government nor the environmental community can drive our culture alone. We must have commercial partners. This is one reason why the Sierra Club alliance with Clorox is a milestone event.

To be clear, there are strong (and in some cases vehement) divisions within the Sierra Club leadership and larger environmental community over this new partnership. While I remain plugged in to Sierra’s internal operations, what I state in this column is as a journalist, not a former Sierra leader.

Carl Pope is a good man. He leads the Sierra Club and does so with aplomb. He speaks openly about solutions to environmental challenges and global warming tops his list consistently. Here is what he had to say about his new official relationship with Clorox.

Despite the awful damage which they can inflict on people and property, hurricanes play an important role in the functioning of our atmosphere. My assertion may seem counterintuitive and I will endeavor to share with you here that it is not (and include an anecdote to help me be more persuasive).

As you may know from geology, our planet is in constant motion, spinning and tilting on its axis and orbiting the sun. This motion gives us the force of gravity and an electromagnetic field which helps deflect harmful cosmic rays. For a demonstration of what would happen if we lost the field, rent the DVD The Core because Stanley Tucci’s character explains it well.

The importance of hurricanes is this: even as the planet’s electromagnetic field wards off spaceborne nasties, we need to harness some of the sun’s radiation in order to heat our world and produce oxygen through photosynthesis (without the sun, plants would die and cease to produce oxygen for us to breathe).

So, what we need is a way of keeping the good aspects of sunlight but shedding the bad. Temperature is a big deal in this equation. Because of our orbital track, orbital tilt and the position of the moon, the sun heats the surface of the planet to varying extents at any given moment. If it didn’t, we’d be more like Mars or Venus.

The intensity differential of sunlight striking the dark side of the world and the light side at any given moment is tremendous. It is the difference between night and day, no pun intended.

This is why the spacesuit visor for astronauts is so highly reflective. Conditions in space are such that without a proper suit, an astronaut literally could fry on one side of his/her body and freeze on the other because of the importance of solar radiation. Here on earth, those conditions also point to the importance of hurricanes.

Simply put, sunlight is very harsh. We need our atmosphere to regulate that harshness. During my second commercial airline flight Down Under, I flew between Los Angeles and Honolulu. It was a morning flight so the position of the sun was nearly constant along the port side of the aircraft. Indeed, the sunlight was so intense that my wife Catrin had to close the window shade for our row of seats.

Last month, I had the distinct privilege of attending the third International Solar Cities Congress in the charming city of Adelaide, along Australia’s south coast. The event was tremendous and several of my upcoming threads here on KBC will be inspired from the many revelations I had during my time Down Under.

Among the most fascinating was related by Gary Doer, Premier of Manitoba, Canada. In his remarks, Mr. Doer illustrated beautifully the contemporary effects of global warming and the consequences of polar ice melting in northern Canada.

Churchill, Manitoba is among the most accessible locations for viewing polar bears. Because these majestic beasts can kill a person with one swat of their front paws, it is necessary to enter their habitat in a tundra buggy as pictured above. It is, in essence, a mobile entertainment venue suitable for the harsh weather conditions and strong enough to protect its occupants from excessive bear inquisitiveness or aggression.

The alarming tale of the need for polar bear refrigerators in Churchill, Manitoba which I shared with you last time disturbed me greatly when I first heard it. However, in the same speech, Premier Gary Doer also shared some very good news. His province is on track to decommission all of its coal-fired electrical power plants by the year 2010. Impressive!

Cynics might decry Manitoba’s move as relatively insignificant given the province’s small population compared with other places. That is not the point. The key here is that a province which derives so much of its economic growth from fossil fuels is recognizing in a very formal way that burning coal for electricity is bad. Mr. Doer and his colleagues in the Manitoba legislature have raised the political carbon flash point. It’s just that simple.

As natural gas and petroleum prices continue to fluctuate and as global warming deepens the devastating droughts which are causing hydroelectric and nuclear fission power plants to reduce their capacity, coal advocates point to the merits of their preferred fuel source. Under that narrow definition, they are correct to an extent. Where they go wrong, however, is in the broad side effects of mining and burning the black rocks.

Recently, I shared with you the importance of hurricanes. These killer storms are nothing we should wish on anyone but they play an important part in how our atmosphere regulates temperature. Prairie twisters are similar in the damage they inflict and the role they play in maintaining the health of our atmosphere.

Considering how fatal and costly they can be, you might question the balance between the importance of prairie twisters and our atmosphere. I would not blame you if you did. Fortunately, there’s a new National Geographic video clip which illustrates my point better than any amount of prose. I encourage you to view it at

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=&vid=122307ce-66e2-4478-8aa9-9d2bc5629e30

Isn’t that something? The action film Twister with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt used visual effects inspired by actual storms but the clip linked above documents the real thing and the people who tempted fate for an up-close examination of a prairie twister.

“Enough people think climate change is real to cause developers to change the way we do business.”

- Professor Steven Kellenberg, University of Southern California

Principal, EDAW Green Communities initiative

The 2008 International Solar Cities Congress was an amazing event. When it comes to the environment, I am a very tough audience and am delighted to report to you that I learned many exciting facts at the event in Adelaide. Having returned from it just a few short weeks ago, I did not think that I would attend a conference or forum which surpassed it but, lo and behold, I just did.

Mere hours ago, I returned home from the Urban Land Institute’s Sustainable Communities forum just a 20-minute drive from my home. A very prestigious event, the full name was Creating Sustainable Communities: Strategies for Succeeding in Florida’s Unique Environment. It was superb! Our keynote speaker traveled all the way from California to make the statement quoted at the beginning of this thread during his broader and truly fascinating slideshow presentation.

My friend, the 2007 landmark California green building plan represents a quantum leap in the green building movement!

Professor Kellenberg’s presentation was about much more, though, than how he and his colleagues have worked to convert opponents to California’s green building plan into true believers. He also shared with us the myriad economic and social benefits of green office building innovations and their residential counterparts and the fact that more and more developments around America and the whole world are adhering to green building plans.

Here are two quick statistics:

Guy Dauncey is an environmental pioneer. He’s one of the good guys. As president of the British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association, he continues to accomplish many great deeds for the cause of sustainability, such as the British Columbia provincial government’s Solar Hot Water Acceleration Project. Mr. Dauncey is quoted widely and one of his current recurring themes is that of the Triple Bottom Line.

Simply put, we sustainability experts know that businesses which go green and stay that way expose themselves to additional opportunities which conventional businesses could not seize. Capsulated into a single concept, this is the triple bottom line (TBL).

Born of green office building innovations, the TBL is the intersection of economic success, social equity and environmental sustainability. Think of it as holistic sustainability. Companies which excel at the TBL enter a market segment known as eco-luxury.

A distant cousin of eco-tourism, eco-luxury is a group of goods and services for clients who wish to engage in green commerce and for whom price is a secondary consideration. I will cover this growing trend in future posts but I wanted to make you aware of the scope of the movement today because it refers back quite nicely to its origins, green office building innovations.

The sprawling college town of Gainesville, Florida is situated about a 3-hour drive from my home in the heart of one of the most biodiverse wildlife corridors in North America. If the town of Gainesville is the heart, then the primary campus of the University of Florida is the left ventricle, for it keeps things flowing.

While it still has much work to do, I am proud to report that the University of Florida is among the growing list of schools working to go green. It has made a significant investment in sustainability and other environmental programs for students, alumni and the general public alike through its Solutions For Your Life initiative, among other efforts.

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to hear a presentation by Dr. Pierce Jones who runs the school’s Program for Resource Efficient Communities, affectionately known as Build Green. Due to time constraints of a packed seminar roster, Dr. Jones limited his remarks to the subject of the efficient use of potable groundwater resources. He did a wonderful job!

The map which begins this thread is a decade old and the red shaded areas show what will happen to my home if sea levels rise 3 feet. Sadly, it has become a best case scenario because most of the predictions from the scientific community about sea levels have come to fruition since the map was created.

How dire are our straits, then? I could overwhelm you with facts and figures. Fortunately, our allies at National Geographic have done the heavy lifting for us in the form of an excellent series entitled “Six Degrees.” I commend it to your immediate attention but be warned, it may give you nightmares.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/sixdegrees

In its January/February 2008 issue, Natural Home Magazine published an impressive list of the top 10 best green-built neighborhoods in America, including the Navy Yard at Noisette in South Carolina, which claims to be the most sustainable community in the United States.

I will allow the public relations departments of the other 9 featured projects to vie for the true definition of success and turn my focus to a recurring theme here in my section of Keyboard Culture, that of green sustainable modular buildings. They are very much a part of the Noisette project, as they no doubt are in the others.

There’s an old saying in the Northern Hemisphere which is supposed to help us deal with the chronic recurrence of killer storm events during the first calendar quarter of each year: Spring comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

Like you, in the age of global warming, I find it of no comfort when I see nearly constant news coverage of natural disasters, especially those which leave shattered lives in their wake. The Atlanta tornado of mid-March 2008 and its accompanying weather disturbances compelled me back to a question, though. How does global warming affect the weather?

The simple answer is that it disrupts the planet’s natural ability to regulate itself. As I explained in recent threads, hurricanes and tornados are one of the ways in which our atmosphere dissipates excess energy caused by the temperature differentials which occur every single day of the year as the Earth orbits the sun. However, global warming causes those differentials to fluctuate abnormally.

As the New York of the South, Atlanta is the economic and social anchor of its region, home to the world’s busiest airport, among other key distinctions such as the horrific Atlanta tornado of mid-March 2008. As reconstruction progresses and grieving families mourn the fallen, it is important that we learn from what nature taught us during that fateful week.

The death toll and collateral damage, of course, are the source of greatest shock from the horrible Atlanta tornado and related storms but the fact that they occurred in a dense urban area is a close third on the list of frightening aspects. Why was Atlanta hit so hard? The lack of good windbreak trees is a big reason but more on that in a moment.

Global warming expands the zones where killer storms such as hurricanes (and the Atlanta tornado) form. If you have followed my blog here on Keyboard Culture for some time, then you know that the solutions which we embrace to combat global warming must include the planting of millions of trees. If we do that in a concerted way, we will be on the right track.

There is a large ancillary benefit to doing so, however. Good windbreak trees help reduce the occurrence of killer storms and if Georgia still had its vast, historic forest canopy, there is a good chance that the Atlanta tornado would have dissipated faster and, not coincidentally, the Atlanta region would not be in the deep drought which currently afflicts it (a separate topic best left for a future post here on KBC).

Trees perform many, many important jobs in our environment. Windbreak trees are among the most important because they do the same job as others but add the benefit of regulating wind speed.

My first anniversary as the global warming expert here on Keyboard Culture is just two months away. Since joining this wonderful community, I have passed two key milestones:

1) This section of KBC now sees more than 5,000 unique visitors per month; and

2) I have answered the question, “So, how did you become an environmentalist?” more often than during the previous decade

Another milestone occurred recently. Earth: The Sequel, an essential book about how innovation can figure prominently among ways to stop global warming, became a New York Times bestseller. That’s big news!

Co-written by Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, I commend Earth: The Sequel to your attention for one simple reason: in it Fred Krupp and his co-author Miriam Horn send a clear message that capitalism can be a key ally as we seek new and more effective ways to stop global warming – and in Mr. Krupp the reader finds an authoritative, conservationist source with credentials above reproach. No wonder Earth: The Sequel became a New York Times bestseller! It teaches about fun ways to stop global warming!