During his trip to Savannah, Obama shared a lunch with a few of the locals.

Savannah, Ga. – Willing homeowners across America may soon be eligible for rebates for making energy efficient improvements to their houses, according to President Barack Obama. Standing in front of the student body and faculty at Savannah Technical College, Obama laid out the general groundwork for implementing his $6 billion HOMESTAR program, commonly referred to as the “Cash for Caulkers” program.

Obama said the plan is focused on providing rebates for consumers that purchase energy saving, home improvement upgrades such as insulation and water heaters. Under the program, vendors ranging from small independent contractors to nationwide home improvement chain stores will offer the on-the-spot rebates that will range between $1000 and $1500. The federal government will then reimburse the vendor for the rebate.

This program would also reward homeowners who have energy audits conducted and then follow through with the necessary improvements to reduce their energy consumption. Audited homes that are improved by cutting their energy costs by at least 20 percent can receive up to $3000 with the possibility of a larger rebate for any reduction over 20 percent.

Obama praised the Savannah Tech’s initiative called the YouthBuild program, geared toward pursuing energy efficient business practices through their specialized classes and training. He also drew parallels between the school’s energy education program and the White House’s current goals.

“In terms of energy usage, 40 percent of it goes into our homes and our building,” Obama said during the speech. “So as we’re looking for additional initiatives to spur hiring, I think we ought to embrace what’s happening on this campus. I think we ought to embrace the incredible potential that awaits us across America in clean energy.”

Cutting residential energy consumption and providing relief to homeowners who would partake in the plan, was not the only item on the agenda. The other task at hand for the White House, according to Obama, is attempting to provide jobs for American’s who will assist in weatherizing these houses.

Obama referred to manufacturers and contractors being ready to work and take on the possible increase in demand for labor, and even joked at one point in his speech about outsourcing.

“It turns out that energy-efficient windows or insulation, those things are products that are almost exclusively manufactured right here in the United States of America. It’s very hard to ship windows from China,” Obama said. “So that creates work for small businesses and contractors like some of the folks who are here today. And obviously construction work that’s been as hard hit as anything during this recession, so you’ve got a lot of skilled contractors ready to go.”

The White House has yet to propose the plan to Congress and several details are yet to be determined, such as its duration and costs.

The Center for Neighborhood Technology released a new series of GIS-based maps showing where carbon emissions from driving are the highest in the nation’s metro areas.  The maps demonstrate vividly that, although emissions on a per-acre basis are greatest in highly urban areas, it is in the suburbs and outlying areas where we pollute the most on a per-household basis.  This is because rates of driving are so much higher in spread-out suburbia than in places where homes, jobs, shops, and services are in more convenient proximity to each other.

Above left, for example, is the Tri-State area including and around New York City.  The map on the left shows that the areas with the highest emissions, in red, are those that are most heavily populated.  That much should not be surprising.  But the map changes dramatically when carbon emissions are plotted on a per-household basis, as shown on the right.  It is essentially a reversed image of the map on the left, showing that the most populated areas actually have the lowest pollution rates per household.

The differences show up even more dramatically in the sprawling Phoenix region:

CNT is a longtime collaborator with NRDC and many other organizations, and their GIS work is superb.  I have previously written about their excellent work on the geography of home affordability (for example, here and here) and have cited an early prototype of the CO2 mapping in a post about per-capita thinking in environmental impacts management.

Transportation accounts for 28 percent of all US greenhouse gases, according to CNT, and I believe it accounts for an even higher portion of carbon dioxide emissions specifically.  According to CNT president Scott Bernstein:

“Cities are more location-efficient – meaning key destinations are closer to where people live and work They require less time, money, fuel and greenhouse gas emissions for residents to meet their everyday travel needs. People can walk, bike, car-share, take public transit. So residents of cities and compact communities generate less CO2 per household than people who live in more dispersed communities, like many suburbs and outlying areas.

“If you’re deciding where to live, consider moving to an urban area. You’ll help fight global warming by emitting less CO2. And you’re likely to drive less, so you’ll spend less on transportation, saving up to $5,000 annually.”

I would add that the emissions savings come not only from a greater array of transportation mode choices but also from the shorter driving distances that are taken in more accessible locations.  And, in addition to cities, the traditional centers of well-established suburbs also can exhibit favorable per-household emissions profiles.  This is illustrated in the maps below of metro Cincinnati, where I was last week:

The carbon maps are part of CNT’s larger Housing +Transportation Affordability Index, which includes geographic data and mapping on housing costs, transportation costs, gasoline prices, and various customized variations thereof.  You can currently access the CO2 maps for 55 US metropolitan regions, and zoom in on particular neighborhoods or local communities if you like.  Later this year CNT expects to have 330 metro areas mapped on its site.

Global Water's Droplet Recycling Icon is the Foundation of the Educational Campaign

Global Water Resources of Arizona has become an international expert promoting the use and reuse of recycled water. They did it with big thinking, a smart campaign, and tireless efforts with regulators, lawmakers and their customers. Here’s how:

• Stand For Something That’s Bigger Than You Are: Global Water could’ve been just another water and sewer company. Instead, they are “Experts at Scarcity Management.” Being a utility is simply just their vehicle to propel the water industry forward for smarter use of an extremely limited and vulnerable resource. As Trevor Hill, president and CEO of Global Water, says, “We look for people who want to work for a purpose that’s bigger than themselves.”

• Create A Powerful Visual Brand: Superman doesn’t wear a lower-case “S” on his chest. Nor should your company or cause. In Global’s case, we created a logo that celebrated the “G” in Global Water with their own version of a recycling logo. It also suggested water-swirling-down-a-drain (The first step in the water recycling cycle.). Your logo becomes the visual icon of your brand, what you stand for, and will anchor ALL of your future messaging. Make it active, important and powerful.

• Make Your Message Both Familiar And Unique: Our hero visual with the campaign launch was the recycling logo made of water drops. It’s important to use recognizable visual prompts and present them to your audience with a new and interesting perspective. This technique takes your brand from being conceptual to concrete. It also makes your message more familiar so that doing the “green thing” isn’t so alien to those new to environmental causes.

• Your Green Brand Must Be Approachable, Believable & Doable: To be effective with green marketing and promoting sustainability, you need to embrace your cynics, coax in the uncommitted, and give voice to the believers. Replace defensiveness with facts that support your cause. Facts also arm your proponents with the fodder to become powerful word-of-mouth evangelists on your behalf. Demonstrate to the uncommitted how easy it is to get involved by providing specific actions they can take to make a difference.

• Consistency, Consistency, Consistency: To extend the theme of the water-drop recycling visual, ALL of Global’s print ads, educational materials, website and collateral used droplet icons to punctuate the main message of the particular piece. The success of their outreach was due in great part to the impeccable consistency throughout ALL of their campaign. You can view the work here.

• Avoid The Temptation To Pound Your Chest: Customers don’t want to hear how great you are or how wonderful your product is. Rather, they’re more interested in how you can make a real difference in their lives. Education is THE most powerful form of selling. Stop proclaiming and start conversing with your customer. Let them connect the intellectual dots.

• Appeal To The Heart, And The Head Will Follow: Don’t confuse educating with being boring. People buy with emotion, and then justify their purchase with their intellect (It’s a right brain/left brain thing). Global’s management team worked closely with us to insure the campaign was beautiful, warm, engaging, thoughtful, and always on strategy.

• With Market Leadership Comes Responsibility: Sometimes you have to sharpen your sword, or in this case your pen, and take a stand. Given the expanding population throughout the desert southwest, as well as the drought that may or may not be caused by global warming, Global had to communicate the urgency of their mission with greater emphasis. The water-drop theme was executed in a new and more forceful way to raise awareness of the critical need for regulatory action in freeing up the use of recycled water.

• Be First At Something: Heck, be first at lots of things. Global Water has just received the 2009 EPA “Environmental Achievement Award” for its work and commitment to protecting the environment.  They are one of the first private water utilities in America to build a LEEDs facility.  Global’s Water Resource Center in Maricopa, AZ, functions both as a regional operations facility, as well as a community and educational center.

You can download the case study of Global Water’s branding of recycled water here. global-case-study

This post is a follow-up to my story on Monday about not selling sustainability to a reptile. Imagine if Global based their effort on a  fear tactic of running out of water. The reptile in all of us would simply choose to flee the message or fight it. Rather, Global took the higher road to educate the thinking human in all of us to promote recycled water. I doubt they’d be where they are today, consulting around the world on how to double plumb communities and recycle water.

“My goal is to show people what can be done with a concept I call Salvage Building, thus what you see is 99% Pure Salvage. That means that everything from the doors, floors, windows, lumber, porch posts, glass, and even the siding has been saved and used to create houses that we hope will last for at least another century. I believe that there are presently enough building materials sitting on the ground to build much of the next generation of housing. All it takes to make it so is pure human energy, spirit, and the desire to build something that will last for several lifetimes.

“I also believe we don’t need as much space as we have become accustomed to in this country. Therefore I have created Tiny Texas Houses to demonstrate just how great it can be to downsize our carbon footprint, simplify our lives, and live in a house with a soul that will be energy efficient as well as beautiful.”

These creations have some spiritual cousins in the Third Street Cottages on Whidbey Island, Houston’s Project Row Houses, LA’s Watts House Project, and the cottages built to house people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.  While they are certainly not for everyone, that may not be the point. The images of Kittel’s houses are exceptionally provocative, given the excesses of our society.

I am certainly not the only one who has noticed: the Tiny Texas Houses have garnered a ton of press.  All the images you see here are from the website, and there’s also a video:

A view of downtown Vienna, which ranked 1st in the international "quality of life" ratings.

1   Vienna

2   Zurich

3   Geneva

4   Vancouver

5   Auckland

6   Dusseldorf

7   Munich

8   Frankfurt

9   Bern

10 Sydney

The highest-ranking US city is Honolulu at #29, trailing Vancouver (4), Toronto (15), Ottawa (16) and Montreal (22) in Canada.

Other US cities in the top fifty include San Francisco (30), Boston  (35), Portland (42), Washington (tied for 44), Chicago (tied for 44), and New York (49).

According to the company’s website, Mercer “is the global leader for trusted HR and related financial advice, products and services.  In our work with clients, we make a positive impact on the world every day.  We do this by enhancing the financial and retirement security, health, productivity and employment relationships of the global workforce.  Mercer has more than 18,000 employees serving clients in over 180 cities and 40 countries and territories worldwide.”

More on what the rankings purport to measure:

“Living conditions are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories:

• Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement, etc)
• Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services, etc)
• Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom, etc)
• Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc)
• Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools, etc)
• Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion, etc)
• Recreation (restaurants, theaters, cinemas, sports and leisure, etc)
• Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc)
• Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services, etc)
• Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)”

On some level, rankings like this are inherently silly and arbitrary.  But they are fun, which is why as a society we are obsessed with ratings, rankings, and competitions.

And it’s worth noting that the top contenders are all relatively compact and walkable, with excellent multi-modal transportation systems.   Of the top ten, I’m most familiar with Geneva, which I have visited quite a few times while shamelessly tagging along on my wife’s business trips.  It’s wonderful, though seriously expensive (affordability is conspicuously missing from Mercer’s criteria, apparently aimed at a corporate clientele).

The compact, walkable, and transit-friendly description fits the Canadian and American cities as well, at least compared to most American cities (with the possible exception of Honolulu, with which I am unfamiliar).

The top 50 cities on Mercer’s list, with some discussion, may be found here.

Of course, the resources available to you depend on your site specifications. That’s why the central feature of the new site is a mapping application. You can find your county on the appropriate map; select the different map layers to see current renewable energy sites and resource potential; and then read about the latest technologies to see which mix of energy opportunities might work for you and your community.

And if you live in Florida, Ohio, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, or Tennessee, you can get even more detail about what’s going on with renewables in your state. We’ve started with these five states because we had to start somewhere and these states are key battlegrounds in the debate about what sort of action our country should take to stop global warming. By being able to see actual projects and renewable resource potential in each state, we hope everyone—and especially the folks in these states—will realize that renewables and other solutions to global warming are not something that someone else somewhere else will be worrying about but really opportunities for all of us often right in our own backyards.

Now, more than ever, America needs the ingenuity and resil­ience of our farmers, builders, engineers and business people to meet the growing energy chal­lenges shaped by the issues of global warming, national security and domestic job loss. Climate change threatens all of us with more unpredictable weather, stronger storms, more pests and diseases, and longer and more intense droughts. Reliance on foreign oil also puts us at the mercy of political affairs and currency exchange rates.

Fortu­nately, local action can make a difference. Each technology featured here can contribute to better air quality, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, add good jobs to the economy and protect environmental values such as habitat and water quality. When these technologies are combined to use the by-products of one system as the input for another, the economic and environmental benefits are even greater. Across the country, we are poised to tackle these problems and reap the myriad benefits of homegrown power generation: clean energy can bring jobs back to America, enhance our national security, promote conservation practices and reduce harmful pollution. Working together, farmers, investors and policymakers can forge these connections to help build a sustainable future for America and the planet Earth as a whole.

The site was designed to show the enormous potential for new energy systems that reduce global warming emissions, protect critical environmental values and move the United States toward energy security. Please check it out. Poke around. Try the maps. And let me know if you think it’s cool or helpful or maybe even inspiring. And then check back in regularly. We’re going to be adding details on more states, more technologies, and more of the critical policies need to stop global warming and build our supply of clean, home-grown renewable energy.

Small island nations, such as Trinidad and Tobago, can "simply dissapear" due to rising temperatures, warned Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Attending the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, along with U.S. President Barack Obama, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters on Saturday that if climate change is not dealt with properly “some island states will simply disappear.”

Chu called the potential for disastrous hurricanes and rising oceans caused by an increase in temperatures “very, very, scary.” Climate change is “a demonstrable fact,” he said.

He cited “very, very convincing evidence” that climate change “was caused predominantly by greenhouse gas emissions.”

Polar ice is melting “considerably faster than anyone predicted” just a decade ago, he said.

Obama, during his address to the summit in the island’s capital, Port-of-Spain, on Friday, was also extremely vocal about climate change, and the need to develop sources of renewable energy.

In order to combat the effects of climate change, such as those Mr. Chu alluded to regarding islands beginning to ‘disappear’, the President proposed the creation of a new Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas “that can forge progress to a more secure and sustainable future.”

Trinidad and Tobago is one of the wealthiest Caribbean countries and lies just 11 miles off the coast of Venezuela. The island is quite small – slightly less than the state of Delaware.

“It’s a partnership that will harness the vision and determination of countries like Mexico and Brazil that have already done outstanding work in this area to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Obama.

“Each country will bring its own unique resources and needs, so we will ensure that each country can maximize its strengths as we promote efficiency and improve our infrastructure, share technologies, support investments in renewable sources of energy. And in doing so, we can create the jobs of the future, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and make this hemisphere a model for cooperation,” he said.

Obama said that the threat of climate change is a real one and needs to be dealt with collectively. “The dangers of climate change are part of a broad range of threats to our citizens,” he said.

“We must come together to find new ways to produce and use energy so that we can create jobs and protect our planet,” he said.

Even with her abrupt about-face on global warming, Governor Palin is sticking to her position of "Drill, baby drill".

At a hearing hosted Tuesday by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss the future of offshore energy development on the nation’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, long considered to be a denier to the global warming phenomenon, has finally, and blatantly, conceded that it’s causing harm to her state.

“We Alaskans are living with the changes that you are observing in Washington,” she said. “The dramatic decreases in the extent of summer sea ice, increased coastal erosion, melting of permafrost, decrease in alpine glaciers and overall ecosystem changes are very real to us.”

But the governor’s solution to the problem is not going to make environmentalists any less hostile to her opinions than they previously were. Palin insists that the solution to the deterioration of Alaska’s ecosystem will come from further drilling – which surely won’t go down well with opponents of “Drill, baby drill”.

She wants to increase the use of natural gas in order to replace currently used dirtier fuels to meet the goals of stemming the effects of global warming.

“Many believe that in order to mitigate these long term and systematic changes it will require a national and global effort to decrease the release of human produced greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” she said. “However, simply waiting for low carbon emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals for reducing CO2 that will be required under most credible climate change models.

“There is no way to achieve these goals in the next few decades without a dramatic increase in domestic natural gas and a strong effort to modestly increase domestic oil production,” Palin said. “Keeping Alaska’s OCS [outer continental shelf] lease sales, exploration, and development programs on schedule, especially in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea, is critically important to this effort.

“Stopping domestic energy production of preferred fuels does not solve the issues associated with global warming and threatened or endangered species, but it can make them worse,” she said.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, the drilling issue was a frequent, and oft-argued, topic. The McCain-Palin camp were big proponents of utilizing the nation’s oil and gas reserves to assist in the overall energy solution.

In her comments, Palin seems to say that humans are playing a role in climate change. But not everyone is smiling at the apparent about-face.

“I don’t know if this signals an official change in her thinking,” said Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. “But she is a pretty savvy politician and ‘maverick,’ and I think she sees the writing on the wall that there’s going to be some legislation and some administrative action on climate change, that this is something she’s going to need to address.”

Alaska’s outer continental shelf — federal waters generally located three miles offshore — could hold about 27 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to government estimates.

A protest in Washington against coal-fired power plants.

Out of fear of a major disruption to their power supply, British police utilized the tactic of pre-emptive arrests on the green protesters.

In an unprecedented large-scale pre-emptive raid, police in the U.K. swooped in and arrested 114 environmental protesters who were suspected of plotting to sabotage one of Britain’s largest power plants.

The protesters were camped out at an independent school in Nottingham, close to the coal-fired power station which was believe to be the target, before police swooped in for the midnight arrest raid.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, allegedly Britain’s second-largest producer of carbon-dioxide emissions, was last targeted by protesters in April 2007, when eleven people from the Eastside Climate Action group were arrested after chaining themselves to buildings and equipment on the site.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power-station, target of the alleged plot.

“In view of specialist equipment recovered by police, those arrested posed a serious threat to the safe running of the site,” said Police Superintendent Mike Manley. “This was a significant operation, with large-scale arrests. There were no injuries during the arrests, and the police investigation is ongoing.”

Had the sabotage been successful, tens of thousands of homes would have been left without power.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attempted action, but police are questioning those placed under arrest and are conducting an extensive investigation in an effort to glean some information into the alleged plot.

E.On, the operator of the coal-fired plant, issued a statement saying: “We can confirm that Ratcliffe power station was the planned target of an organised protest during the early hours of this morning.

“While we understand that everyone has a right to protest peacefully and lawfully, this was clearly neither of those things so we will be assisting the police with their investigations into what could have been a very dangerous and irresponsible attempt to disrupt an operational power plant.”

Witnesses described a scene where more than 20 police vans quickly descended on the meeting point and carried out mass arrests.

Protesters have previously chained themselves to conveyors, scaled the cooling tower at another E.On owned power plant in Kingsnorth, blockaded E.On offices, protested at events sponsored by the German-owned company, stopped a coal train and invaded or blockaded several airports around the country.

In the aftermath of the 2007 attempt to shut down the coal plant, the Eastside Climate Action said the break-in reflected “the threat climate change poses to the human population”.

A spokesman said: “We argue that the threat to human life is so serious that it is a proportionate and reasonable response to take direct action.”

A legal bid carried out by environmentalists, which would have paved the way for more direct action without fear of prosecution, ultimately failed.

When it comes to consumption, humans can either be locusts descending on a helpless farmer’s crop, or a gracefully grazing gazelle on an African plain. My point is that we don’t have to devour everything in sight. Mindful consumerism can actually help to heal the planet. We simply have to be more responsible in how we balance commerce and ecology.

The more green digging I do, the more incredible people, organizations, products and businesses I find who are changing the paradigm. So I will begin to feature them in this year-long series of posts: “How Commerce & Ecology Can Coexist.”

Let’s take a look at my first entry: Greenraising.com, Earth Friendly Fundraising, which donates 25% of each online purchase to your cause.

The organization was started by the parents of elementary school children who watched how their PTA struggled each year to raise money. At the same time, they noticed that their children were coming home with concerns about the environment, pollution, global warming and living conditions in the world, and were feeling helpless to change things. Greenraising was created to help solve both problems: Raise money for schools and give children an opportunity to learn that their actions can change the world.

Greenraising found so much success with their school fundraising model that they have expanded their mission to benefit other non-profit organizations.

Register your nonprofit with Greenraising.com, and they will send you 25% of the proceeds from all eco-friendly products purchased from their site, providing the buyer names your organization as the beneficiary. Greenraising.com will also help you with catalog drives and planning fundraising events.

Plus the site offers interesting insights into how commerce & ecology can and DO coexist; like this little ditty about their Guatemalan Peace Coffee.

To me what Greenraising.com is doing is impressive. It’s a “circle-of-life” mechanism to raise funds for non-profit causes, by selling eco-friendly products, that educate site visitors on Earth-friendly consumption, that helps us all to become better stewards of our planet, by raising awareness and funds for programs important to us.

They are examples of the famous quote by Margaret Mead:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Do you know of a cause or organization that is doing a good job of demonstrating how commerce and ecology can coexist? If so, let us know.