Ian Urbina’s investigation of fracking waste getting disposed in rivers made fracking the top story on the cover of the times in February, 2011, a height in the fracking timeline altogether.
That article precluded a series of long-form, muck-raking reports called “Drilling Down-Series.”
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Image Credit: NYTimes
Your recent work for New York includes many projects that fell in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy: newly built Transmitter Park in Greenpoint, public buildings for the beach at Far Rockaway, public architecture in Battery Park that flooded at the tip of Manhattan, and on top of that, you’re now working on the East River Blueway, again at the water’s edge. Tell us about Sandy’s effect on your work.
The parks performed well, and they helped the waterfront absorb the impact from the storm surge. The parks have survived in great measure the salt water in the Battery and Greenpoint and the sand in Far Rockaway. This is taking into consideration that they came back within three weeks of the storm with the help of many volunteers and staff, who devoted hours to clean up those areas.
It is the electrical and mechanical infrastructure that didn’t survive the storm surge, and now the city and state are having to do a great deal to repair and re-install damaged equipment. Hard hit were the offices of many of our public and not-for-profit clients – the Battery whose office and archives were devastated, Jill Weber and her team in the Rockaways whose offices were severely damaged. Many agencies have staff who also have damaged homes.
Did the storm change the way you think about the city’s waterfront? Or might design for the waterfront, going forward?
Yes. It gave us a direct understanding of 100-year, and 500-year, flood lines. This was a reality check in time, space, and effect. Now I will never push to have utility infrastructure within reach of even a 500 year line. But like other catastrophic events it is important to not forget, but to absorb and make a part of all the design decisions one has going forward. Especially when making the hard decision of what to choose to do first.
As a designer of public space, if you were to boil down your reactions to the event, and came up with one take-away message for people to think about, what would it be? What would you like to see the city, and the country, do going forward? Are there adaptive methods or infrastructure would you like to see put into accelerated use?
Prioritize the environment by investing in the resiliency of cities and their residents, and this includes not just New York, but all important waterfront cities.
As a country we have to realize that the best way to save the planet is to support the fact that our cities all over the country — from Detroit to New Orleans — present the best opportunity for lowering our carbon footprint and are critical players in safeguarding our rural spaces and agricultural lands.
We need to make cities — and people who live and work in cities — a national priority, and invest in innovations in social and civic infrastructure like public housing and transportation and all types of public open spaces on and near the waterfront. This will be the best investment we can make in light of the unpredictability of climate change. It was amazing how grateful people were that the 2011 revival of East River ferry service was there to fill in when the subways weren’t running yet.
Do you think the city should build sea gates?
I hope that we will innovate in many areas and this might include sea gates. It is going to test the city and state’s abilities to harness a coordinated effort to do all types of environmental work that is not on the table today, because of permitting and current regulations. New York City in all the five boroughs needs to raise the level of many of the waterfront lands for storm protection and raise critical infrastructure in our public housing, hospitals, sewage treatment and utility buildings.
We need to put back and increase the dunes, invest in cogeneration and a disbursed power and data network, and even build new sea gates, salt marshes, planted berms and other initiatives. This increases the local expertise with rising sea levels; engineers, architects and ecologists might come up with a range of measures that even the Dutch haven’t tried yet. As important as sea gates might also be state-of-the-art local energy generation and data hubs.
Our first interview with Claire Weisz took place weeks before Hurricane Sandy struck New York. That portion follows:
Can you tell us about some of the current projects you’re working on in the city, like the Rockaway project?
The Rockaway project is the architectural piece of a master plan for a very unusual park. It was basically a little tiny park attached to a very large parking lot that was really part of the dunes and was used for dumping, from Beach 9th Street to Beach 30th Street.
When you say it was used for dumping…
People thought it was derelict land and they’d leave things there. The Rockaways is so challenged environmentally from threats of storms and also because it’s such a mix of high poverty areas, relative transportation isolation, and beautiful environment. It’s become an affordable place for people to move, but it also has real economic challenges and it doesn’t have all of the services and amenities. So one of the target parks that the Bloomberg administration focused on was to create a real amenity out there. So, everyone wanted a pool, but they got instead lots of water play, a skateboard park, more playgrounds, a big lawn for concerts, a football field.
The idea is that you have a functional thing, the maintenance office, a comfort station, but then you have this space and there’s kind of a dune park over here.
Attached to a comfort station is an open air classroom or community meeting space — something that can be a shade structure when nothing is happening, but that also becomes the beach pavilion shared by everyone.
Was the intent to service mainly just that community? Or to allow other people from other communities to use it as well?
The intent was to actually do something similar to what happened in Battery Park City. They created the best playground around and everyone from the whole city showed up there, which is not surprising. That was a similar goal in the Rockaways. To open up the neighborhood. And it’s already happened apparently. People are showing up at the skate park [from all over].
Tell us about another project you’re working on.
Another project — also a waterfront park — is called Transmitter Park. It’s part of the Greenpoint master plan, and it ties together…have you seen the zipper benches?
Down at the Staten Island ferry terminal?
Yes. We were doing the master plan for the park, and trying to figure out the urban design and zoning issues of making people feel like the esplanade was going to be public. We started to explore this idea of a bench that then turned and took you somewhere.
Then we realized that that idea of the benches had a lot to do with some of the things we felt urban design needed to do. One is encompassing an environmental idea of public — what they shared, what things, like trees, need to be protected, and how to occupy space and make really good relationships.
Out of that master plan we’re doing one piece of [Transmitter Park] as a park with Dar Walkovitch of A-com, the landscape architects. And we’ve designed the pier and you’ll see all of the railing, and the benches, and this pretty interesting pier. Only half of it’s being built. It’s actually a branching idea. So it’s an idea of saving money actually to do piers, where you only put the pile foundations, the piers, at what we call pods, and then you have these little bridges that connect the pods.
And that’s just phase one?
Well, already, you’ll go down if you take the ferry, already pieces of it are being built, and as each developer develops property parts of the esplanade will be built. And Bushwick Inlet Park is also part of that master plan.
And what else is on the docket for the master plan? How far into the future does the plan reach?
The whole thing is ongoing and it’s happening as we speak. It’s really interesting to see that public realm being built one piece at a time. And I have to say, on Transmitter Park, I went there the other week and there’s this fantastic new little coffee shop in a place that was a dead end street.
It must be satisfying to see these spaces being occupied.
Completely satisfying to see… people have all these ideas. What’s also fun about Transmitter Park is it’s a site for the Nuit Blanche festival, so that’ll be out there.
The other big project that we have under construction is the sanitation garage and salt shed on Spring Street, and that’s also worth talking about. That’s a big industrial, city project to house three garage units, maintain vehicles, store salt, refuel garbage trucks, house sanitation personnel. And you can see the steel going up.
So what kind of things are you thinking of for the sanitation garage?
Well the sanitation garage is designed and it’s now under construction and really that was developed kind of twofold. How to do a beautiful, but yet, not aggressive building; a building that was very calm and could feel like a good neighbor. But the exciting thing about it is that all the guts of it are kind of shielded by louvers which are kind of composed to make subtle differences on the West side and on the South side.
Is that to disguise the building from the rest of the neighborhood?
In a way. In a way it’s to not say in super graphics, “here’s a big garage here” towards the neighborhood, but towards the West Side Highway it’s very apparent. But the idea is to not make it look like an office building — to actually make it look like the piece of industrial civic architecture that it is. [But] there won’t be any public access to it if you’re not a sanitation worker.
We’re trying to really enhance the industrial quality of it and make people want to go in, and we hope there will be tours actually, of the trucks and everything because there’s a lot of potential for that. And to be able to have kids really access and see how big these machines are, what it takes to kind of clean them. So when they see a garbage truck going down the street picking up recycling they’ll have a whole new appreciation for it.
What’s your background?
I grew up in Canada, and I went to the University of Toronto for architecture. Got my professional degree there. Then, the economy was terrible — so basically, on a lark, I decided to go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles at that point was an interesting place to be as an architect. Frank Gehry had just finished his little house, there was all sorts of dialogue about downtown LA, and people were looking at city halls as community.
I felt very lucky; I worked for architect Charles Moore at the Urban Innovations Group and really got interested in the idea of how design and communities and kind of new things happen.
So that’s always been a real interest, but very much as an architect. I would say at a core I am interested in form, space, light and inhabitability, I’ll call it. I’m interested in architecture being the kind of ‘art of people.’
I went back to school at Yale and that’s where I met Mark Yoes, who is my current partner. After I graduated I worked for Agrest and Gandelsonas, who are very interested in…I’ll call it ‘acupuncture planning.’ The idea that you kind of can read a city and do certain things at certain points that will change the city more. They’re very anti-master plan. I was very compelled by that, so I worked for them.
What do you think New York needs more of? Just more green spaces, or something completely different?
I think what New York always needs more of is passionate, visionary supporters, and essentially clients for design, like Friends of the High Line, like Robby Hammond, Joshua David, and Rory Price at the Battery, and Betsy Barlow Rogers.
There are younger people who get ideas in Jamaica, in Far Rockaway, and see something and they want it to be better than anything in the neighborhood — whether it’s better food, better seating, better shade, better wi-fi — on some level I think that’s what’s really fun about New York. There exists an engagement in expectation, and that’s really what we need more of.
There are so many talented people who have ideas about how to make things and do things. The other piece is supporting local talent in the industry — people who make clothes and people who make railings — and trying to find a way to create affordable spaces so that people can make new things.
So there’s no real fixed idea in your head of what New York should be — it’s just sort of a never-ending potential of what could happen?
To me it’s really about the dynamic — this dynamic of saying, making a living and making money and doing well — that ambition to create a business that’s successful is fantastic. But, coupled with that, we want it to be the BEST interior restaurant, we want it to be the best… those two things working together, not just one or the other. I think it’s that. Then you get the unexpected.
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More recent design work from WXY includes a popular plan for the development of Pier 40 on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, as shown in this video:
And a plan for the redevelopment of the blocks around Grand Central Terminal, as part of the Municipal Art Society’s new report on the future of East Midtown:
About:
Claire Weisz founded WXY Architecture + Urban Design and has focused on creating innovative approaches to public space, structures and cities. She co-founded with Andrea Woodner The Design Trust for Public Space and was its co-executive director. Claire is currently on faculty at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a visiting critic at the University of Toronto, and she has also taught and lectured at Yale University, Parsons’ Graduate Program in the School of Constructed Environments, Columbia University, NJIT and The Pratt Institute. She has served on numerous design award and competition juries and was co-editor of AD magazine’s “Extreme Sites: Greening the Brownfield” issue. Frequently cited in the media and professional circles, Claire is a registered architect in California, New York and New Jersey.
Portait of Claire Weisz by Jessica Bruah; all other images courtesy: WXY
CityMayors.com said last year that in 2008, for the first time most of the world, 3.8 billion people, lived in urban areas. The NYU Stern Urbanization Project seems to think this is a good thing, or at least that its a wave to be ridden in such a way as to advance human progress.
David Miller, former mayor of Toronto and now a Future of Cities Global Fellow at NYU Polytechnic Institute will talk about urbanization with Paul Romer, director of Urbanization Project.
A scientist, an environmentalist and a radio talk show host will mull over the question: is Hurricane Sandy the new normal? They will talk about climate change and how it affects NYC and the world.
Speakers are Dr. Allegra LeGrande of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Ted Glick of Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Ken Gale of WBAI’s “Eco-Logic.”
This event is sponsored by North Manhattan Neighbors for Peace and Justice, Senator Adriano Espaillat, City Council Members Ydanis Rodriquez and Robert Jackson, Community Board 12, WE ACT for Environmental Justice and others.
Image: from flyer
Urban Park Rangers will talk about weather patterns and sustainability as it pertains to the future of NYC.
Studio X is hosting another event for those with a creative mind as they bring in interdisciplinary designers to stretch one’s concepts of the future. The premise of the workshop is to join a collaborative effort in order to design a futuristic oddity that will be displayed on February 15th in Brooklyn’s “99¢ Futures” store. This event is perfect for those interested in how social transformations are reflected in the products we use and wish to explore this thought with others.
Come join the assembly line at Studio-X NYC on February 9th, from 10am – 5pm, fabricate a future-snapshot, and put your product in a 99¢ store of the future. Your artifact will join dozens of other novelties, oddities and necessities of the future, all available at the bargain price of 99¢, when the one-night only pop-up store opens on February 15, on 23 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.
This event is free and open to the public; RSVP required to 99cfutures@gmail.com
(Photo: Studio X)
After Hurricane Sandy devastated New York City and regions along the East Coast, you may have read about the link between global warming and extreme weather patterns. However, discussions about sustainable city development and urban policy are still missing from the federal agenda.
Forward-looking urban planning plays a crucial role in growing a healthy and competitive national economy. This is a fact, and Hurricane Sandy has accentuated it. Economists from Moody’s Analytics estimated that the super-storm would inflict $20 billion in loss of economic activities. New York City, in particular, will suffer the heaviest blow which accounts to $12 billion, or 60% of the losses. The total estimated cost was $50 billion; about $30 billion for property damage and $20 billion for the loss of economic activities.
Imagine the impact if businesses were forced to shut down for months in New York City.
To pay for the damage, New York City will utilize both federal disaster relief fund and revenues generated from its high-tax rates. As Mayor Bloomberg stated in a press conference: “New York City taxes itself and spends the money to protect us and to have the services that will keep us going. And I know of no other city that does that.” When the worst scenario happens, the Mayor doesn’t plan on relying on the federal and state resources. His point not only emphasizes self-reliance, but also highlights the fear that political gridlocks will likely prolong rebuilding efforts. Indeed, the New York Times article “Federal Relief Costs Likely to Be Big, and Contested“ illustrates such fears.
Even New York City, which is one of the richest cities in the world, cannot pay for all the necessary development on its own. Jonathan Rose, real estate developer and member of the MTA Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainability and Climate Change, wrote that “Sandy underscored our need to invest in the planning and reconstruction of our subways, trains, tunnels, and bridges to make them more resilient—but to do so will take money, lots of it. And our cities and states don’t have it.”
We need to put urban policy onto the national agenda. Cities and states will need money from the federal government in order to build critical, resilient infrastructure. This is vital investment, and the nation has reasons to care about it. If the destruction of Hurricane Sandy can drag down 0.6 percent of economic growth, the next storm (they are appearing more frequently and getting more severe) will post severe threats to freight delivery, travel, retail, and subsequently reduce trade, the demand of manufacturing, and spending from the hourly workers who who did not get paid during the storm. All the losses of economic activity do not just affect a few cities, or states; in this example, and in today’s interconnected economy, the disruption of cities have immediate national consequences.
Furthermore, the federal government should look beyond hurricane recovery, or the short-term goal of using disaster relief funds to initiate cleanup efforts. In terms of long-term objectives, the federal government should focus on establishing effective urban policy that rebuilds resilient local communities, ensures the vibrant economy and long-term sustainability of the cities. And that will include the topics of climate change, disaster preparedness, mass transportation, education, poverty alleviation, affordable housing, and more.
Stigma is the biggest barrier. During the 2012 MAS Summit, the panel titled “Election 2012 and What’s at Stake: The Federal Government and the Future of New York City” pointed out that urban policy was not a priority in the presidential election, which showed that candidates were unwilling to associate themselves with issues such as poverty, or spending for infrastructures. However, these issues will only get worse if the federal government doesn’t grant enough funding to address them. Indeed, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in the MAS Summit that “the federal government has no plan for urban centers… the next NYC mayor will need to figure out how to get resources from the government and find ways to generate revenues.” With limited funding, engineering solutions like sea barriers remain daydreams. Even smaller interventions, like inflatable plugs to protect the tunnels, are a new cost for a very green transit system that is strapped for cash.
Since cities can directly impact the gains and losses of the nation, the federal government should start considering resilient city development as an investment, not a cost.
And no one city can completely pay for themselves in making the transformation, not even New York City.
The fiscal challenge is an issue, but the federal government should foster a cooperative inter-agency approach and take steps to establish guidelines for sustainable and competitive city developments. This is not a suggestion to enlarge the federal government. Government at the national level cannot possibly plan for all the diverse cultures and values that exist in all local communities. For example, no entity except the communities in New Jersey can decide whether Governor Chris Christie should rebuild Jersey Shore the way it was before Hurricane Sandy, or completely re-locate its coastal residents — although federal policy on flood insurance will loom as a factor in those choices.
A national guideline of city development nevertheless should help disseminate information of good urban practices and coordinate funding allocation processes among the federal, state, and city agencies.
The truth is that U.S. simply won’t be able to compete in the 21st Century without vital, creative, well functioning cities, with resilient, modern infrastructure to face the new challenges of a changing climate. As a result, cities and states will benefit from the commitment of the federal government and, in return, help strengthen the competitiveness of our nation.
Photo: New York Times
As of noon, the mayor has ordered an evacuation for residents in the most vulnerable areas of the city, ‘Zone A.’ [Because of demand, this embedded map may be slow to load.] More info below map inset.
The subways shut down at 7 PM tonight, with likely service restoration beginning on Wednesday. As noted by the MTA’s director of sustainability, Projjal Dutta, increased storm surges in recent years have made the underground transit system more vulnerable. Because of the size of the storm, combined with a full moon tide on Monday night, the surge from Hurricane Sandy is expected to surpass that from Irene last year. Predictions are from 6′ to 11′ in NYC; the higher estimate would certainly overflow seawalls in lower Manhattan, and could reach subway street grates and entrances.
More links and notes:
Here’s an interactive wind map of the U.S., built from National Weather Service data.
Warmer oceans and a shifting jet stream, both artifacts of climate change, are an influence on the size of storms reaching the East Coast, yet climate change is not a top subject in the presidential campaign:
“Any serious effort to address climate change will require a transformation of the nation’s system for producing and consuming energy and will, at least in the medium term, mean higher prices for fuel and electricity. Powerful incumbent industries — coal, oil, utilities — are threatened by such changes and have mounted a well-financed long-term campaign to sow doubt about climate change. The Koch brothers and others in the oil industry have underwritten advertising campaigns and grass-roots efforts to support like-minded candidates. And the Republican Party has essentially declared climate change a nonproblem.” (NYT 10/26).
The national politics of coal, oil and natural gas are a factor in how the presidential campaigns approach the subject.
What kinds of approaches might society take in the future? Geoengineering is under discussion, with both pros and cons. And a tougher cap and trade system, to limit emissions, might begin to link the east and west coasts of the U.S. in terms of policy.
For more background, some thinkers we’ve collected on City Atlas:
Projjal Dutta, MTA, on the benefits of mass transit; Gavin Schmidt, NASA, on the science; Alan Frei, CISC, on Hurricane Irene and NYC’s water supply; Klaus Lackner, Columbia University/Earth Institute, on developing technology for long term solutions.
The latest from NOAA (via Andy Revkin):
A thorough study of climate politics, via Frontline:
Watch Climate of Doubt on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
I am from Bogotá, Colombia. It was not till after three years of living in NYC that I found out that Bogotá is now considered one of the best examples of urban climate leadership. What I witnessed around 10 years ago was the very encouraging vision of two mayors in Bogotá. The first mayor was interested in changing the citizens’ behavior and mentality, and the second one was interested in beautifying the city.
The first one, a mathematician, philosopher, and politician by profession, created social campaigns to generate “a global citizenship consciousness,” targeting citizens living in the capital, with origins from all over the country, and idealizing a greener city with features like bicycle paths. The other, an urban planner, put some of these ideas into action: citizens noticed a more organized, cleaner, and greener city with trees, bicycles, beautiful sidewalks, parks, rivers, and lakes. These men, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, had an incredible impact in making Bogotá a better place to live.
And maybe that is what is now is visible in NYC, where indeed there seem to be more and more people concerned about the city. More campaigns encouraging citizens to recycle and to use paper bags instead of plastic ones. More people doing outdoor events, exercising, using public transportation and biking. According to a survey reported in the New York Times, six years after the Bloomberg administration began adding 255 miles of bicycle lanes onto streets previously dedicated to automobiles, New Yorkers have gradually become accustomed to bicycle lanes. And even though bicycling still remains far from mainstream in New York City, what is true is that lanes are another option for greener transportation. According to Dr. Barrie Cassileth, in an interview following the NYT survey, these bike lanes “will get rid of some of the pollution from automobiles and reduce the amount of automobile traffic” on NYC streets. Dr. Cassileth went on to note that bikes make for a cleaner, safer, more inviting, and healthier city.
As Ricardo Montezuma, one of the most renowned architects from Colombia, affirms, “the great achievements…are the result of a new kind of government centered on issues rather than party politics or ideology… Residents feel a new sense of ownership, belonging, and pride in the city, that was visible in the use of ‘ciclo-vía nocturna’ (night ciclo-vía, a bicycling event on Bogotá’s bike paths), an evening in December 2002 when more than 3 million people celebrated in the streets.”
Here in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg has taken significant steps to lessen our environmental impact. However, he can’t revamp the city alone. The model that Bogotá has established can and should lead the world in the direction of environmentally-friendly cities. Perhaps, as we try to create a greener city, we should be looking south to the efforts of the mayors in Bogotá.
Check out the documentary CITIES ON SPEED – Bogotá Change for a closer examination of the steps that Mockus and Peñalosa took to make Bogotá the environmental leader city when they governed.
Photos: Wikimedia Commons (top) and TEDx (bottom)
Yo soy de Bogotá, Colombia. Sin embargo, no fue sino hasta después de tres años de vivir acá en NYC, que oí que Bogotá había sido considerada uno de los mejores ejemplos de ciudades urbana según el Climate Leadership Broup. Como muchas ciudadanos, lo que pude visualizar hace unos 10 años fue a un par de alcaldes visionarios optando por una mejor ciudad. El primero, se interesó por el cambio del comportamiento y mentalidad de los ciudadanos, mientras que el segundo, se interesó por el embellecimiento de la ciudad.
El primero, un matemático, filosofo y político de profesión, creó campañas sociales para generar una “conciencia de ciudadano global” en los ciudadanos que vivían en la ciudad y que venían de todas partes del país. Les hablaba de una Bogotá más verde con ciclo-rutas. El otro, un urbanista, consiguió poner estas ideas en acciones. Los ciudadanos vimos una ciudad más organizada, limpia y verde, con más arboles, bicicletas, bonitos andenes, parques, ríos y lagos. Estos dos hombres, Antanas Mockus y Enrique Peñalosa, tuvieron un gran impacto.
Y quizás es eso mismo, lo que hoy en día se puede percibir en NYC, donde al parecer hay más y más ciudadanos preocupados por su ciudad. Más campañas en pro del reciclaje, alentando a los ciudadanos el uso de bolsas de papel en lugar de bolsas de plástico. Más gente realizando actividades afuera, ejercitándose, haciendo uso del transporte público y usando sus bicicletas. De acuerdo a una encuesta del New York Times, seis años luego de que la administración Bloomberg diera inicio a la planeación de unas 225 millas de ciclo-rutas, los Neoyorkinos han conseguido acostumbrarse al uso de las mismas. Y aunque el ciudadano común aun no termina por acostumbrarse a desplazarse en bicicleta, lo cierto es que las ciclo-rutas han sido ejemplo de una opción mas ecológica de transporte. Según una entrevista realizada a Barrie Cassileth, “estas ciclo-rutas servirán para disminuir de alguna forma la polución producida por los vehículos así como del trafico mismo” en las calles de Nueva York. El mismo Cassileth afirmó que las bicicletas harían de la ciudad una ciudad más limpia, segura, acogedora y saludable.
Como afirma Ricardo Montezuma, uno de los arquitectos mas conocidos de Colombia, “los grandes logros … son el resultado de un a nueva forma de gobierno mas enfocado en problemáticas sociales que en ser tradicionalmente partidista… Los ciudadanos tienen un nuevo sentimiento de autonomía, pertenencia, y orgullo hacia su ciudad, que se hizo visible en el uso de la ciclo vía nocturna de Diciembre de 2002 cuando mas de 3 millones de personas se reunieron en las calles“.
Acá en NYC, el alcalde Bloomberg, ha dado grandes pasos para mejorar el impacto ambiental. Sin embargo, esto es algo que el no puede hacer solo. El modelo que Bogotá estableció podría y debería ser seguido por otras ciudades apostándole así a un mundo mas amigable con el medio ambiente. Tal vez, mientras tratamos de crear una ciudad mas verde, deberíamos observar los esfuerzos realizados en el sur por estos alcaldes de Bogotá.
Para mayor información relacionada con los programas puestos en práctica por Mockus y Peñalosa, observa el documental CITIES ON SPEED – Bogotá Change.
Fotos cortesía de: Wikimedia Commons (top) and TEDx (bottom)
How many paper cups, styrofoam coffee cups, coke bottles, water bottles, and plastic bottles have we used and thrown away like nothing? Too many.
It’s not just the amount of waste that we produce that we should think about, but also the material that such products are made of. Kawagishi-sensei, a Zen Buddhist monk and high school calligraphy teacher, has a cup made of clay that he has used for thirty years.
Maybe we should all start with a cup.
More info about the article One life, One cup click here
Photo: No Impact Man
Cuantos vasos de icopor o cartón, botellas de coca-cola, botellas de agua y botellas de plástico hemos usado y desechado como si nada? Demasiadas
No se trata solamente de pensar a cerca de la cantidad de desperdicio que producimos. También es importante pensar en el material del que están hechos dichos desperdicios. Kawagishi-sensei, un monje budista y profesor de caligrafía en una escuela, conserva una taza hecha de cerámica que ha usado por treinta anos.
Tal vez todos podríamos seguir el ejemplo y asi empezar por una taza.
Más información sobre el artículo Una vida, Una taza haz click acá
Foto: No Impact Man
Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times has compiled a stunning survey of progress in restoring the Bronx River. The river was one of the most beautiful waterways near the early city, and vanished in modern times as the Bronx became a home of heavy industry. Now, through decades of concerted effort, parks and restoration projects are bringing the river back piece by piece. See a slideshow from the piece here, and a narrated video here.
If fear of getting lost in the woods has deterred you from hiking the great outdoors, pretty soon you’ll have no excuse. Recently, Google announced that they are developing Google Street View Trekker, an extension of Google Maps’ Street View feature, but taken off the grid. Historically, Google Maps featured only places where cars could travel— because they captured almost every view using cars.
However, with Trekker they’ve adopted a new way of capturing the world: extremely advanced backpacks that feature panoramic cameras, an inventive method that will now allow Google Maps to access all manner of off-road locations. The project is still a work in progress, but the prospect of having this feature in the city is exciting.
Some hiking purists will probably object to the mechanization of the pastime; but having Trekker as a resource that allows them to discover new trails will probably bring a change of heart. And imagine how grateful they’ll be when it’s pitch black and they don’t have to check every tree for that little stripe of faded paint.
Photo: Joanna Stern/ABC News.
The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) has been around since 1893, and since its inception has been working to make the City a more livable space. The organization has a history of successes ranging from its championing of the first municipal zoning code to “saving Times Square.” MAS serves as an umbrella organization for a number of committees of professionals who actively and passionately advocate for changes that will make New York City an even greener, smarter, and better place to live.
In a city where you practically start hemorrhaging money the moment you step off the plane, and where meeting new people is as easy as stepping outside your door, you might hesitate to drop $65 to meet new people. But a membership to join MAS’s Urbanists program is more than just an investment in new friends, it’s the urban enthusiast’s networking dream. For over ten years, MAS has united both new and native New Yorkers with a program that fosters participants’ interest in urban issues and passion for urban literacy. 
Aimed at young professionals, the Urbanists program encourages dialogue through ”intelligent programming,” tours of relevant city sights, and a wide assortment of networking and social events including the swanky annual After Dark Party. Additionally, Urbanists gain access to MAS briefings, and networking opportunities with prominent members of the MAS board.
Hundreds of individuals early in their careers gain broad exposure to critical ideas in urban planning, design, and public space: engaging issues that, though not necessarily related to a member’s specialty, are nonetheless extremely relevant and necessary for anyone living in this great city. The Urbanist program grants members a variety of perspectives on a number of important issues in city design and sustainability, and introduces individuals to a new group of interesting, forward-thinking peers.
The Urbanists’ program is the perfect pairing of networking and learning, and is not an opportunity to be missed. Find out more here.
Photo: MAS
Imagine that you could go through high school, receive a Associate’s Degree and upon graduation, be in the front of the line for an entry-level job at IBM.
That’s exactly what P-TECH — the Pathways in Technology Early College High School — in Crown Heights, Brooklyn is equipped to do. Its innovative and unique school model pairs each student (grades 9 –14 – yes, 14) with an IBM mentor, providing them with the support necessary to develop the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) skills needed to succeed in today’s workforce. P-TECH is a public-private partnership between the NYC Department of Education, NYC College of Technology, CUNY, and IBM, and opened its doors to its first class of ninth graders in September 2011.
P-TECH students and their IBM mentors correspond weekly through an online resource called IBM MentorPlace. This website is used to post activities that relate to what the students are learning in school, and to allow communication between mentor and mentee via a discussion board. And it is not just the students that this is beneficial for — the mentors gain too, by sharing their time and knowledge with kids that otherwise would have less of a chance at a tech career.
I recently had the opportunity to visit the school for City Atlas, to see the students and IBM mentors in action at an event in celebration of the 2012 National Engineer’s Week. The event brought 35 IBM volunteers, 103 students, and P-TECH staff together to build and test some creative rocket ships made of balloons.
The students were divided into nineteen different groups, and each group was paired with an IBM volunteer. The task at hand was to build a rocket out of balloons, straws, paper clips, and tape that could carry the greatest amount of weight (in this case, washers) and zoom across the room to the end of a 25 foot fishing line. A tricky task indeed – and the winning team’s rocket toted a payload of a whopping twenty-two washers!
This was just one of many interactive events P-TECH students have with their IBM mentors. I spoke briefly with the Principal of P-TECH, Rashid Ferrod Davis, as well as Robin Willner, VP of Global Community Initiatives at IBM to learn a little more about this innovative school model.
* * * * *
I asked Principal Davis about the admissions process –
Students will receive their letters by the end of April. Then by May we should be able to start a pre-summer program for our second class – for the new 9th graders.
Correct.
You have to come to an information session and say that you’re interested. You get twelve choices as an 8th grader, and you’d want to rank us in one of your top choices, so that you way have a better chance of getting in. So some schools you may have to do an audition, you may have to actually take a test, or you may need to meet an academic requirement. And with open admissions none of that applies to us.
Correct.
Did just about everyone get in then?
Well, when we opened last year we were at a different part of the process. We went through what was called the “third round” last year because the applications had already been mailed into their guidance counselors by December. It was announced that we would be opening up around February or in March.
As a new school, we only got to deal with students who were not already matched. So that was our first class.
For this year, we were able to be part of the beginning process, going to the large high school fair and then to the individual borough fairs. So that was a little different for us this year. We got four times the number of applicants this year as we got last year! And every year it will grow – the more you are known the more your reputation builds.
It’s a hundred and eight each year. So a maximum of six years. It is a six-year model, Grades 9–14.
It is! We’re looking forward to growing.
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While experiments continued around us, I walked over to hear more from Robin Willner, VP of Global Community Initiatives at IBM:
For every student who comes to P-TECH, they’re going to be a great leader in the city, in another ten years – and we’re so proud of them. But it’s also about the whole economic development of New York City – to show that we are a focus for IT careers, that we are a focus for technology – come here and you will have the best employees, because we’re preparing them at P-TECH.
No. They’re each going to have a different company – so we’re looking for a lot of companies to get involved, and work with the city, work with the schools, work with the universities to put this model together.
Well in the next five years I’d like to see all these young people you saw today graduate! Because in five more years, they’ll have finished their sixth year in the program, and we can’t wait for that.
But then also, you know this is not about one school as you said, it’s about getting a lot of new programs or even existing schools to think about having more career-readiness in their program, more college-readiness, more rigor in their curriculum – so we hope we’re helping other schools to change as well.
Well we’ll see. I think that’s best. But, we’ll make sure that every student will have a mentor, and that every student will have a mentor that has enough time for them. That we can assure you. Now we may have some IBMers who want to work with more than one student, but every student will have a mentor who’s paying full attention to them.
That’s right. It’s a progression. At the end of six years, they’ll be ready to actually start working at IBM, and so that means that before then, they have to have time to actually be doing work at an IBM site – maybe on a project. And before that they’ll have internships, and before that they’ll shadow. This year they did a lot of visits. So it’s a progression.
Well, I think that there are a lot of things – I think that technology can be a wonderful way to increase our sustainability and decrease our carbon footprint. And IBM has a lot of green solutions that we share with our customers and we’ll be sharing those.
Sure, right – P-TECH is just one of the things we do. We work literally with thousands of schools around the world, in early childhood, we work with science teachers. We have a project called World Community Grid that actually we have some great projects coming up for Earth Day, so watch out for that. Ways that people all over the city can get involved in helping to improve the quality of water and air around the world.
But to hear more about that you’ll have to wait for Earth Day. We’re going to have an announcement for Earth Day, and it’s something that everybody can join.
That’s right.
It will be happening all over the world but everybody in the city can participate.
Well certainly because we’re developing – we’re still designing and working and improving P-TECH, we’re spending a lot of time here. But we’re working with the whole New York Hall of Science… with NYSci on a program for teachers, on science education and we’re very proud of that. We do other work with the City University of New York – we have a project with Queensborough Community College, we have IBMers volunteering all over the city – so we’re very busy in New York. It’s a big city and there’s lots to do!
* * * * *
After the winners of the competition had been announced, the event wrapped up with some closing remarks from Rolando Franco, one of the IBM mentors in attendance.
“There are half a billion words in the English language, and that’s five times more than there were in the time of Shakespeare. So the world is changing all around us, ultimately. And, by 2013 – that’s next year – it is predicted that there will be a computer – a super computer design that will exceed the computational capacity of the human brain. And in fact I read that in Japan, they designed a machine that can compute 10 to the 14th computations per second. The human brain is estimated to do around that much. So we are already at the point, of just doing raw computations comparing to how the human mind works. So think about the potential years from now. It is predicted that by 2023 when you guys are out of college you will be able to buy one of these supercomputers for about one thousand dollars.
So what does this mean to you? There will be careers that you’ll be working in that probably don’t exist today. Right? And engineers will be required. So it’s very important for you guys to focus on your school, to become engineers because you’ll help shape the future.”
* * * * *
As Robin Willner stated, in addition to P-TECH, IBM is involved in a range of other educational initiatives throughout New York City, ranging from a STEM program at Queensborough Community College to the donation of Young Explorer™ computer learning centers to CUNY child care centers, as well as plenty of programs in between. Stay tuned for more on these other IBM initiatives!
In real estate it’s all about location, location, location, and the same is true for sustainable environments. The landscapes people encounter and interact with daily are the ones that need to be greened, not those on the fringe that require people to deviate from their usual paths just to get there.
Battery Urban Farm operates in conjunction with Battery Park Conservancy Credit: Rachel Northrop
In Battery Park, compost is decomposing, vegetables and herbs are growing, students are learning, and urban landscapes are shifting. A mere stone’s throw from the 4/5 Bowling Green station is a small urban farm that yields herbs, vegetables, and fertile soil from compost. Last Wednesday, at a fundraising dinner held by NRDC, diners enjoyed a meal made entirely from the farm’s yield. Battery Urban Farm is sustainable in its practice and its design; the bamboo fencing is entirely reclaimed from last summer’s rooftop installation at the Met.
Battery Urban farm is clearly a success, with hearty green plants, veggies and herbs in full bloom. Manhattan is ripe for harvest. Credit: Rachel Northrop
Walking off the sidewalk into the grass around the farm is refreshingly un-Manhattan-like. The difference in surface between pavement and earth is noticeable, but most New Yorkers in their daily bustle don’t have the chance to experience both.
Many incredible NYC farms are in the outer boroughs or Harlem, and therefore off the radar of many. While Battery Urban Farm is moderate in size (it feels more large vegetable patch then farm), it is completely visible, centrally located, and 100 percent open to anyone to see, smell, and touch. You can pass by buildings housing incredible rooftop farms and never know it from street level, but hundreds of thousands of commuters heading to and from South Ferry pass the farm daily, and thousands more Wall Street employees see it as they enter and exit massive office buildings.
Curious New Yorkers explore a new, sustainably urban landscape near their offices. Credit: Rachel Northrop
Battery Urban Farm marks the integration of sustainability into a familiar, corporate and concrete landscape of Manhattan. Nearby schoolchildren use the farm as a living classroom and volunteers work alongside Battery Conservancy employees to maintain it, but those most significantly affected by the farm are those who will probably never participate in it but simply see it.
The more visible and pervasive sustainability becomes, the more likely it also becomes that residents who are not particularly “green” will begin to consider their own living and working environments in new, more sustainable ways.
Battery Urban Farm provides a reference point from which more urban farms inside existing city parks can stem. Imagine if Central Park, Bryant Park, Thompkins Square Park, Washington Square Park, Union Square, Madison Square Park, and Marcus Garvey Park all also had small urban farms to educate local students and feed nearby residents (think donations to food banks, even localer green markets, or even sales to restaurants). The entire composition of the city could shift–CAN shift–as soon as we look places like Battery Urban Farm and conceive that it’s possible.
More details about the farm, here.
View slideshow: Battery Urban Farm
This article originally appeared at examiner.com.
Summer has arrived! Soon enough, you’ll be seeing blue.
Citibikes are coming! Photo via velojoy.com
A brand-new fleet of nearly 10 thousand bicycles will populate New York’s streets in the coming months, and they will all need riders. We’ve already posted the DOT’s interactive map of 420 planned bike share stations across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Now it’s time to take another step closer to your future as a renter-rider.
The most recent project of OpenPlans, a non-profit focused on open government and better transportation, gives New Yorkers a sneak peak at our improved future lifestlyes as bicyclists. Using this map, you can plan your daily commute to work, a jaunt to the High Line, or a weekly cycle to the EBT-friendly greenmarket nearest you.
So far, the map works like this: you pick the start and end points, and drag the flags to change your route. Cibi.me currently provides a recommended pickup and drop-off site for your rented three-speeder, as well as the number of bicycles available at the start point and how many parking spaces you’ll find at the end of your journey. You can also change your route to determine quickest, safest, or flattest journey.
The quickest route: a screengrab from cibi.me
According to a recent post by OpenPlans’ Frank Hebbert, cibi.me will let you know if bikes are available before recommending a route to you once the bikeshare program is in full operation.
In the mean time, you can share comments or suggestions for cibi.me @OpenPlans.
Here’s to the future: an open-sourced, collaboratively-planned, bicycle-positive New York.
Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner has received quite a lot of attention for his artificial “tree” invention that can suck carbon from the air a thousand times faster than real trees. The idea for the tree was originally inspired by his daughter Claire’s eighth-grade science project a decade ago, which involved extracting carbon dioxide from the air using a fish tank pump and sodium hydroxide. For his invention, Lackner also drew on the natural structure of one of nature’s most successful carbon absorbers — leaves. At Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, where Lackner is director, he and his colleague, Allen Wright, are still finessing elements of the “tree.”
Maria Ioshpa, a senior at Stuyvesant High School, spoke with Lackner and Allen Wright about the potential of this innovation in helping tackle climate change:
Some people argue about how much CO2 we are really allowed to have in the air: should the limit be 450 parts per million? Some people say no, 350 ppm was already too much. Other people are still saying 450 is all right, maybe 550 is all right. And it doesn’t really matter what you think is all right, because once you’ve gotten to that point, the only way to prevent CO2 levels from going higher is to — for all practical purposes — stop putting CO2 in the air.
If you want to stop at 450 ppm, how many tons of CO2 are in the personal CO2 budget of the average person on the planet? It turns out, about 30 tons. Think of a big tanker truck full of gasoline or jet fuel which you may have seen in an airport next to an airplane trying to fill that up — that’s approximately your personal budget. Not for today, not this year, but forever — for you, for your children, and for your children’s children. So every time you go somewhere in a car, you fill it up out of that truck. Every time you fly somewhere you pull it out of that truck. Every time you have Thanksgiving and you have a turkey and turn on the gas stove, you have to take it out of that truck — and it turns out the average person in the US goes through a truck like this in five years. So our budget is gone in five years from now. The world’s budget is gone in about 30 years from now because most people don’t consume as much as we do. Some are a little more careful with it. Some are just too poor to consume it. So at the end of the day you have not much time left to stop.
(Klaus Lackner, Director of the Lenfest Center; video by Justin Strauss)
The basis is a plastic leaf that has the property of being a vehicle for “air capture.” By air capture, I’m talking about the removal of carbon dioxide from ambient air; from the air outside. If you took all the CO2 out of a block of air roughly the size of a card table, you would just about fill a teacup. Our job is to remove that teacup’s worth of CO2 from any given block of air, concentrate it, and deliver it as a stream of pure CO2. This is different than the removal of CO2 from a concentrated source, such as the exhaust from a power plant or the exhaust pipe on a car.
Consider a situation in which someone is running an old coal power plant somewhere in the world that continues to put CO2 in the air, then what can we do to compensate for the power plant’s emissions? Well, air capture, and this material [holds up artificial pine branch] allows us to take the CO2 out of the air that they have put in.
Allen Wright:
Actually, one of the reasons we want to remove carbon dioxide from the air is to capture emissions that are occurring in other parts of the world. It turns out that the atmosphere in the world is very well mixed. So if you put CO2 into the air in California, in no time at all that CO2 is very well mixed into the air and you can very effectively take it out of the air in New York City. Now, if you put a ton of CO2 in the air, and you remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere somewhere else, you have effectively eliminated the impact of that ton of CO2.
This material has a funny characteristic. In a dry environment (like in the summertime on a hot day, or in the desert), this has a very strong affinity for CO2; CO2 in the air wants to bind with the molecules on the surface of this plastic. In a wet or very humid environment (like it would be here in New York in the summer, or in the tropics), the humidity causes the CO2 to come off of this material and go back into the air.
Well, that’s really neat because that means all the energy we have to use comes from the evaporation of the water off of this as it dries. So, we take this material, which is full of CO2 from being out in the air, and we scrunch it up and put it in a tube, make it wet, and all the CO2 is going to come off of this material and into the gas stream. Then, we can suck that CO2 off and we can deliver it as a stream of carbon dioxide gas. So now we have this material that is wet and empty of CO2, and all we have to do is stick this outside, and if it’s dry outside, the water will evaporate off of this material, and it will revert to the state where CO2 can bind to it again.
And so, in essence, this is a CO2 pump: it takes CO2 from the air and pumps it and delivers it into this stream. This will work over and over for years and years.
(Allen Wright, Senior Staff Associate)
Of those little ones, an awful lot. But you have an awful lot of trees too. So we figured out how to package them for a device which can collect one ton per day and that would fit into a big truck, into a shipping container. Such a unit can collect much more CO2 than your car puts out. You don’t put a ton of CO2 out in a day.
And you would need millions of those one-ton-a-day units, but that’s not so bad if you think about it: If you had ten million such units you would take back 3.6 gigatons of CO2 a year, and right there that’s about 10 or 12 percent of the world’s yearly CO2 output. That’s a pretty good start.
If the air capture units last ten years, then each year you have to build a million new ones to replace the old ones, creating a production line of one million units a year. Now the world is producing 70 million cars and trucks a year, so we can do manufacturing on that scale — we do that with automobiles already. So we could make this happen on a scale that is meaningful.
I do want to point out that we are working with a private company, Kilimanjaro Energy, which is actually trying to figure out whether there is a market for CO2.
Klaus Lackner:
It’s a complicated question. Will this tempt you to not deal with the problem? Let me turn this around: What other options do you have?
Furthermore, I think this won’t by itself solve the problem. Scrubbing CO2 from the air is one weapon in the arsenal; by itself it’s not good enough. Clearly there are other places where other strategies are more economical. If you had a power plant and you were to scrub the CO2 out of the power plant that would be much smarter. If you had power which didn’t make CO2 in the first place that would be very useful. But you do end up with some fraction of power that for a long time will emit CO2 because we have that infrastructure, and because it’s actually very difficult to get rid of liquid fuels.
So to come back to your question regarding whether this will encourage people to ignore the problem for a while: The answer is, maybe for some people it does. But the flip side of the problem is: you may not have a choice anymore but to take back CO2. You need some way of pulling the CO2 out of the air, and forests are not quite fast enough.
I’m not particularly an advocate for the idea that we have to give up liquid fuels. What I am arguing is that if you successfully remove the problem that liquid fuels create, and you pay for removing that problem, then there’s nothing wrong with using liquid fuels. If you can’t fix the problem or it is too expensive, then you have to find another solution. And in the long run, we cannot let CO2 pile up in the atmosphere. So we have to find answers.
Now, with individual choices it’s always easy to say, ‘I’m such a little bit that it doesn’t matter so I’m ok.’ I’m always amused when I go to a conference and we all talk about how much CO2 everybody emits, and then I proceed to ask a “dumb” question: “How did you all get here?” And the participants all came on long intercontinental airplane trips. When I follow up by asking how much CO2 each participant caused to be emitted on that flight, I am often met with a response to the effect that, since the trip was taken for a good cause, the output in that case doesn’t count. That may well be true, but if we all think that way, we’ll never fix the problem.
So we have two choices: we make it totally expensive to contribute to the problem, such that people opt not to, or we pay for whatever it takes to avoid the problem in the first place. And of course it’s not just one — there are many problems associated with fossil fuel. The first and immediately most important one is that it puts greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But there are other issues as well. Mining is hazardous and often environmentally difficult business, so you have to figure out how to fix that too. You have work on all of these pieces, but currently the most pressing is CO2.
Klaus Lackner:
I think it’s not just one career — there are very many different paths. I would argue that what we at the Earth Institute call “sustainable development” has many different pieces to it that are so central to the problem. We’re being challenged environmentally. We have technologies to address energy and transportation issues; we have technologies for a lot of things. Where we run into trouble rather routinely right now is the environmental footprint of the things we do.
So we have to figure out how to make those footprints smaller, and that involves people from different facets of our entire society. You can decide that you want to be a political scientist, and there are plenty of relevant policy questions to address there. You can decide to become an engineer and solve the problems by looking at the engineering issues. You can become a scientist, and a lot more of science today is focused on how, precisely, the planet works and on what the environmental issues are that come with it. You can also become an astrophysicist and you would not be particularly concerned with this planet, but if you are worried about the planet, there are still many ways to get involved. It is not one size fits all, and I can’t even tell you which one is more important. Adding to that, politicians are perfectly willing to find a good solution if they feel like there is a solution, but as long as the engineers don’t provide anything, nothing much will happen. And if the engineers aren’t focused on these problems, nothing will happen either. So you have to get all of the various fields and disciplines together, and push in the right direction in whatever field you end up in.
That is a very difficult question. In my opinion, you have to combine realism with optimism because if you can’t do that, you feel like the problems are all so daunting and you’re not coming out of the other side. Realism means that you look at the issues and recognize that there are real problems that require real solutions and then start working on solutions. Don’t start from the premise the world is coming to an end; be an optimist, but be a cautious optimist and make this optimism real.
By making carbon footprints and other environmental impacts more visible, by getting people excited, you’re getting the message out there. The issue right now is that nothing happens, because there’s no political will to make it happen, and the political will can only come from informing the public. I think there are a lot of messages out there that are saying we’re all doomed, and that’s there’s nothing we can do. And that message doesn’t rally people to do something. I think it’s better to say that here’s a problem, and here’s a solution. It may not be the only solution, it may not be the best solution, but at least it means there’s a way out. This creates hope, which leads to the assurance to start asking questions like, “Can’t we do better?” And if you come up with something better, I’ll take it.
Klaus Lackner is the Ewing Worzel Professor of Geophysics at Columbia University, where he is also the Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and a member of the Earth Institute faculty. Lackner’s current research interests include carbon capture and sequestration, air capture, energy systems and scaling properties (including synthetic fuels and wind energy), energy and environmental policy, lifecycle analysis, and zero emission modeling for coal and cement plants.
Lackner earned his degrees from Heidelberg University, Germany: the Vordiplom, (equivalent to a B.S.) in 1975; the Diplom (or M.S.) in 1976; and his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics, summa cum laude, in 1978. He was awarded the Clemm-Haas Prize for his outstanding Ph.D. thesis at Heidelberg University. Lackner held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before beginning his professional career, and he attended Cold Spring Harbor Summer School for Computational Neuroscience in 1985. Lackner was also awarded the Weapons Recognition of Excellence Award in 1991 and the National Laboratory Consortium Award for Technology in 2001.
The Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy focuses primarily on developing the next generation of carbon capture and storage technologies, as well as technologies that will improve energy efficiency and thus reduce carbon emissions. The center, part of The Earth Institute, Columbia University, is also engaged in policy research and outreach on a variety of energy topics, with a common emphasis on sustainability and climate change.
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Photography by Justin Strauss
