By Little Falls, New Jersey resident Sean Mathews has developed a low-cost solution for protecting equipment from flood damage, and he wants to see more homeowners have access to it.
An excellent article on the subsidies that support growing cotton in Arizona
To understand how federal policies that support the woefully unsustainable cotton farming in the Arizona desert, take a look at this ProPublica article, Holy Crop: How Federal Dollars are Financing the Water Crisis in the West, by Abrahm Lustgarten and Naveena Sadasivam. Four years ago, when I took a sabbatical
Teaching the Duck to Fly – Timing Electrical Demand to Renewable Supply
Orienting panels to the west to catch the setting sun—at the time usage peaks—might make solar power more valuable even if less total electricity would be generated.
Municipal Governments Working to Make Their Cities More Resilient
I came away optimistic that the attendees in the room weren’t going to simply sit by and wait for action; they were going to make it happen.
Fundamentals of Resilient Design: Wet Floodproofing
Letting floodwaters into a building is an important resilience measure, but it has to be done in a way that prevents damage.
Proposing a Resilient America Service Corps
Along with outdoors-focused initiatives, a Resilient America Service Corps could provide the labor needed for weatherization, installing window treatments, and carrying out deep-energy retrofits.
Engineering Our Way Out of Global Warming: Is Climate Intervention a Global Warming Solution That Republicans Will Get Behind?
I am all for carbon-capture—both the research needed to better understand it and the implementation of strategies that employ it. But albedo modification (enhanced solar reflectivity) is a different story.
Views on resilient design by some leading architects
There’s a nice discussion about resilient design in Metal Architecture magazine that was just posted. It features Robin Guenther, FAIA of Perkins + Will; Greg Mella, FAIA of SmithGroup; Robin Minnery, the new staff leader on resilience issues at the American Institute of Architects; Jeffrey Dugan, AIA of Dattner Architects;
How to Make a Hospital Resilient: A Tour of Spaulding Rehab
Spaulding Rehab hospital in Charlestown, MA is designed and built to provide for sheltering in place. A key part of this strategy is the inclusion of screened, operable windows in patient rooms, lounges, offices, and other spaces.
The Most Resilient House in North America
When his house burned down in 2012, Alain Hamel he set out to build a home that would keep his family safe no matter what nature threw at it.
Searching for Optimism in an Age of Climate Change
What inspired me to launch an organization to promote these and other aspects of resilient design, was the recognition that the safety aspects of these strategies might be a stronger motivation to get mainstream America on-board in achieving more sustainable, lower-carbon buildings and communities than simply “doing the right thing.”
A Dramatic Resiliency Plan to Transform New York City: The BIG U Moves Forward
The first portion of the project was approved by HUD in mid-October, 2014 for $335 million.
Do We Need to Shift Gears Post-Election?
Rather than sitting back and waiting for the pendulum to swing back to the left, we need to find more examples of environmental gains that can be achieved in ways that deliver other benefits—in other words, that appeal not just to the left, but across the political spectrum.
A Vision for Transitioning to Renewable Energy Sources
From the standpoint of resilience, a shift to this sort of renewables-based energy system will create a more resilient, distributed power grid with a more diverse generation sources.
By The business implications of sea-level rise along the Atlantic coast, and especially in Delaware
I want us to envision an unfamiliar challenge together. I want us to think about the plans and investments we may need to make.
