Eco Brooklyn » Ethics

Wal-Mart Lies to NY Green Contractor

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:43:47 +0000

Eco Brooklyn does not want Wal-Mart in New York because we feel Walmart’s business model is not conducive to the small neighborhood shopping experience that makes New York and Brooklyn so special.

We posted our opinion in this blog post on our site.

Recently somebody called Keith Blackwell tried to leave a comment to that post and it immediately raised our suspicions that Wal-Mart was waging a dirty media campaign by paying people to impersonate pro Walmart opinion. I think Keith Blackwell is a PR person in New Jersey.

Keith’s comment went like this:

I will tell you Wal mart will give New Yorkers LOWER PRICES!! New York by far is the most expensive city to exist in, and in consist of mainly poor folks. You sidity New Yorkers have a bad way of acting as if poor people and crime doesn’t exist there! THE vast amount of New Yorkers give more than half of there net pay to RENT! I am from Philadelphia and the quality of life I have here I could not no way near afford in New York. You already have Targets so what’s the difference but lower prices. Zone Walmarts properly and give New Yorkers a break. You allowed Bloomberg to run for a third term, so allow a WalMart.

There are many suspicious things about this post. Lets look at who Keith is trying to be.

Words like “poor folks”, “sidiy New Yorkers”, and “I could not no way near afford in New York”, make Keith sound poor uneducated. He is trying to connect with the people in NY who struggle to make ends meet and who would prefer cheap prices over gentrified shopping neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens and Park Slope.

Keith portrays those against Wal-Mart as “sidity” snobs who are not in touch with the majority of New Yorkers – poor people who deal with hardships like “crime” and “paying half of there [sic] net pay to RENT!”.

Fair enough. Keith is a poor person who feels a Wal-Mart in NY would increase poor people’s quality of life. Why somebody in Philadelphia feels so strongly about this is beyond me but maybe they just love Wal-Mart.

But my alarm bells go off when I see how well informed this person is. Forget the bad grammar and spelling mistakes for a moment. This person lives in Philadelphia. How come they know the politics of NY so intricately?

Here is what Keith knows.

Many New Yorkers pay half their income in rent.

We have Targets

Walmart needs to be in the right zone in order to build

Bloomberg was allowed to run a third time

I don’t know but this poster doesn’t know the difference between “their” and “there”. Keith talks like a caricature out of a movie: ”I could not no way near afford .. New York” and “New York by far is the most expensive city to exist in, and in consist of mainly poor folks.”

Who talks like that? I live in NY and am exposed to many styles of talking and I’ve never heard this one. To me it sounds like a hodgepodge of different styles pulled together by somebody trying to create a persona.

Yet Keith, a supposedly lower class Philadelphian, is better informed about NY politics than many New Yorkers. Call me ignorant but I don’t even know who the mayor of Philadelphia is, let alone whether they have Targets or Wal-Marts.

And is Wal-Mart cheaper than Target? Keith things so, “You already have Targets so what’s the difference but lower prices.” Is this the oppinion of an avid price shopper or the plug of a Wal-Mart advertising writer?

I decided to look up the location of Mr. Blackwell’s IP address. It is located in New Jersey. I didn’t go as far as researching what companies are in that area. A Walmart? More probably a media and PR firm.

And the name Keith Blackwell? I’m reaching here but it sounds like a subconscious reference to a generic first name coupled with a symbolic last name.

Here is his info if you care to investigate further:

Author : Keith Blackwell (IP: 208.54.87.151 , m975736d0.tmodns.net)
E-mail : quizkwb@hotmail.com
Whois : http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/208.54.87.151

I sent Keith an email to try and pull more info out of him. I said:

Hello Keith,

Thanks for the note on my site. I posted that blog post a long time ago and things have changed since then. You still live in Philadelphia? I bet the prices are better there!

And the email quizkwb@hotmail.com? Looks like a random email to me that was recently picked since all others are taken. If Keith has a hotmail account he would have gotten it a long time ago when something more appropriate would be available like kblackwell@hotmail.com for example.

I didn’t get a response from him. I included my phone number in my email. But who do you think texted me on my phone two days later for the first time in my life?

Yup, Wal-Mart.

From a Florida phone number, 561 526 3812, I got this text:

Congratulations! As a thank you, call 855-768-1763 to recieve your $100 Wal-Mart rebate! 2 end reply STOP

So I guess my email did get through after all. But not to Keith Blackwell.

Bottom line, Wal-Mart is using dirty tactics to try to get into NY. If this includes lying then so be it. Another reason I don’t want them in NY. In case there is any confusion, I am a real human being and I don’t want Wal-Mart in NY.

As a citizen I don’t want Wal-Mart. And as a green builder and New York green contractor I don’t want Wal-Mart because big box stores do not add to community or good architecture. Atlantic Mall is ample reason not to have big box stores.

Benefit Corporations law signed and active in New York State!

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:08:21 +0000

Finally, a way to pursue the “triple bottom line” (people, planet and profits) with legal backing! It is called the Benefit Corporation (as opposed to a normal C or S Corporation for example). Signed into NY legislation by Governor Cuomo the new law allows businesses to be recognized and filed a for more than their financial goals.

Benefit Corporations have a legal responsibility to all stakeholders, not just the shareholders like a traditional C or S Corps. This means they are obligated to take into account the effects of their decisions on the community, the environment, employees, etc. Benefit Corporations can also voluntarily undergo certification by the nonprofit organization B Lab that makes them “Certified B Corporations” and ensures they have a social purpose and benefits for stakeholders. More on that here .

With the new law, New York is joining states that have already passed similar legislation, including Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey, Virginia, Hawaii, California.

The key distinctions of Benefit Corporations from traditional corporations are these three things:

1) Purpose: They must have a corporate purpose to create a material positive impact on society and the environment;

2) Accountability: They must expand the directors’ and employees’ fiduciary duty to require consideration of the interests of workers, community and the environment and all stakeholder

3) Transparency: They must publicly report annually on overall social and environmental performance against a comprehensive, credible, independent, and transparent third party standard

Other than these three additions, the Benefit Corporations is set up and taxed as a traditional corporation would be. However, for social entrepreneurs like EcoBrooklyn, this changes everything. It protects the mission and purpose of the business and holds up the triple bottom line as a priority. In other words, it legally never puts profits for shareholders above the stakeholders - something that social businesses have been trying to do for decades.

B Lab is a nonprofit that helped create the Benefit Corporation and now works to establish the option of a Benefit Corporation in all states through legislation. Much of the above information came from their website. More information on the requirements and specific details of a Benefit Corporation here.

“Same River: We are all downstream”

Yi Deng — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:54:48 +0000

Here is a MUST SEE event. It is an inspiring creative synergy of art spread over several evenings to raise momentum against the very serious threat of hydrofracking.

The Irondale Arts Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn is putting it on and it starts in a couple of weeks. The show’ll be different every night: it incorporates artwork, live music, video, modern dance, and physical theater. Each night ends with a town-hall discussion of the issues presented. “Same River” presents the community with an opportunity to get involved in an important environmental issue, so check it out if you’re in the area.

Check out the Irondale website for more information and tickets:

Here’s their press release:

2/23: “SAME RIVER” ON HYDRO-FRACKING @ IRONDALE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STRIKE ANYWHERE’S SAME RIVER ON NYC’S ENDANGERED WATER PREMIERES FEBRUARY 23, 2012
NIGHTLY POST-SHOW TOWN HALL DISCUSSIONS

“Same River” A Play About Hydro-Fracking @ Irondale

“SAME RIVER” is a multi-media, interview-based, improvised production. As hydro-fracking is poised to affect NYC’s water supply, “Same River” brings the upstate war over this controversial method of drilling downstream. Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble, whose production of “10 Brecht Poems” was heralded by the Village Voice as “poignant and appreciated,” will premiere “SAME RIVER” starting February 23, 2012 and run until March 3, 2012 at the Irondale Center on 85 S. Oxford St. Brooklyn, NY 11217. Tickets $20-$40 ($15 tickets Wed/Thurs only). Shows Thursday-Saturday 2/23-2/25 and Wednesday-Saturday 2/29-3/3 at 8PM; student matinee at 1PM on Friday March 2nd, 2012. Tix: 866-811-4111 or www.irondale.org

Including live music, modern dance, physical theater, and video, this improvised show will be different every night. Following each show, there will be a tightly facilitated “town hall” discussion on the issues the piece presents. Experts will be on hand to propel the conversation.

Audience members will experience a visual art installation upon entry to the theater. The artwork is the result of a seven-week residency at nearby Brooklyn High School for the Arts with the science, theater and technical theater classes. Art work will also be developed during a community art-making day for families on February 11 at 2:00 PM at Irondale Center (ages 6 and up).

Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble began to develop SAME RIVER in July 2010 as part of the North American Cultural Laboratory’s (NACL) Catskill Festival of New Theater. During this 10-day residency, Strike Anywhere interviewed local residents about water and researched community water issues. Now, as the decision to lift the moratorium on fracking in New York creeps nearer, Strike Anywhere seeks to engage the Fort Greene neighborhood in this discussion. The ensemble will trace the path of Brooklyn’s water supply and illuminate the struggles of communities upstate which are in the thick of the gas-leasing gold rush. Interviews with Brooklyn residents will examine their relationship to water, their knowledge of local water issues and their familiarity with fracking. The piece seeks to draw connections, to give voice to multiple viewpoints and to acknowledge that we are all downstream, that the earth’s water supply is all the same river.

Established in 1997, STRIKE ANYWHERE is a permanent ensemble of world-class jazz musicians, modern dancers, and actors. Known for their use of SOUNDPAINTING, the live composing sign language, the ensemble creates art in the moment, allowing intuition, the sounds of the room and audience suggestion to shape what they play. SA performances always feature live music, physical theater and modern dance. The company applies structures and concepts from American jazz to their inter-disciplinary improvisations to create performances that are provocative and alive. Strike Anywhere has toured nationally and internationally. The company was in residence at The Zipper Factory and St. Clements developing new works. It has appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the American Airlines Theatre, The Irondale Center, P.S. 122, Theatre for the New City, and HERE Arts Center. Additionally Strike Anywhere has been featured on Radio France, NPR, WBAI and German Public Radio.

Irondale was created by Jim Niesen, Terry Greiss and Barbara Mackenzie-Wood, in 1983. Through the power of the ensemble process, Irondale creates and presents theater, performance, and education programs that challenge traditional assumptions about art, and help us to better understand today’s world. The Irondale Center is the company’s theater, laboratory, and classroom. It is also home for ensemble artists of all disciplines and cultures.

“The Atomic States of America”

Yi Deng — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:16:17 +0000

Eco Brooklyn obsesses over energy. Our projects are built to minimize heat loss and optimize gain, while providing individual homeowners ways to generate their own energy through solar panels. We want to minimize homes’ reliance on energy generated through fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Fukushima Daiichi.

These names instantly bring up an instinctive fear of nuclear power as an insidious danger to public health.

Add “Shirley, Long Island” to that list.

“The Atomic States of America,” which premiered at Sundance 2012, is a documentary based on Kelly McMasters’s “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town.” Shirley is a small working-class town that happens to be located right next to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a center for research that has produced seven Nobel prizes since it was built in 1947.

McMasters considered her life fairly normal but first realized something was wrong when her college roommate asked why she was always going home to funerals. Further research revealed an abnormally high rate of cancer and disease in Shirley residents. The prime suspect was low-level radiation from Brookhaven National Lab, whose reactors had leaked…into aquifers supplying water to all of Long Island.

Democracy Now! did an extended interview with the director, Sheena Joyce, and Kelly McMasters, incorporating clips from the film. You can watch part 1 here, and a link should appear to part 2.

As far as I can tell, the story is a troubling and evocative view of human suffering caused by the presence of a nuclear facility, exacerbated by unwillingness of government and investigative agencies to act in the people’s best interest.

But I don’t think it’s a compelling argument against nuclear power. Shirley’s story exposes poor planning (who thought it was a good idea to build nuclear reactors on top of the only aquifer system anyway?) and corruption, which would be dangerous regardless of the technology in question.

McMasters is a modern-day Erin Brockovich, except the bad guy’s now nuclear power instead of Pacific Gas and Electric. Erin Brockovich decried unsafe conditions and inadequate disclosure, not the existence of gas and electricity. The same horror stories surround any town exposed to chemicals and poor operating standards. What about Minamata disease? The Bhopal disaster? The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill? Those tragedies weren’t enough to stop gas or electricity or plastics or oil from becoming ingrained in our modern lifestyle, so why chicken out with nuclear power?

Nuclear power has the potential for massive devastation. I’m going to quote freely from the Wikipedia article on Chernobyl here. More than 350,000 people had to be relocated. The cleanup effort spanned two decades, used 500,000 workers, and crippled the Russian economy. Russian estimates place the number of premature deaths as a result of Chernobyl near one million. The area surrounding Pripyat is still a dead zone, the first legal tourists just beginning to tiptoe in.

Let’s look at some more numbers. There are 441 nuclear reactors in the world, 60 more under construction, and another 150 being planned. They produce 6.3% of the world’s energy and 15% of its electricity. France is the leader in reliance on nuclear power (75% of total energy generated) but the U.S. wins in total number of reactors (144). Some countries, like Italy and Australia, steadfastly refuse to go nuclear. Germany and Switzerland are phasing out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima accident. The future of nuclear power is a deeply polarizing topic, but given the prevalence of nuclear plants, having just a handful of major accidents doesn’t sound unreasonably risky to me.

But is nuclear power worth the risk? Is it truly sustainable? (Nuclear reactors still consume fossil fuels, cost billions to build, and produce tons of dangerous nuclear waste.) Can safety ever be ensured? What alternatives are available?

At present we don’t know enough about nuclear power to guarantee safety and efficiency for people living near plants or people using electricity generated by reactors, so nobody should be guaranteeing those things. Saying that nuclear reactors are clean and safe is a big fat lie. Nuclear science’s destructive side is still engrained in the global consciousness. In school we learn about Hiroshima years before we get to physics.

That’s why we need to be realistic and focus on research and accountability. Walking away from nuclear power out of fear rather than a well-informed decision is failing to make use of all the possibilities. Maybe the facts also say that nuclear power isn’t sustainable, or that the likelihood of an accident is too high.

“The Atomic States of America” might become a new rallying point for people opposed to nuclear power, but don’t forget, it centers around an intensely personal story. The featured testimonial for “Welcome to Shirley” reads: “A loving, affecting memoir of an American Eden turned toxic.” It was from Oprah. I’d rather not have Oprah making energy policy. Her car giveaway habits would definitely not be sustainable.

On the other hand, it’s easy for me to cheer on nuclear development because I’ve never lived in a Shirley. I am, however, in a state that’s highly dependent on nuclear-generated electricity.

New York is one of the 5 states with the highest nuclear capacities. We get 30% of our electricity from nuclear energy. Part of my enthusiasm for nuclear power comes from the fact that it powers 30% of my internet browsing habits. In the end it comes down to sacrifice: would you use less energy to lower the need for nuclear power, or would you rather give up the assurance of a future without nuclear accidents?

One of these will be the obvious right answer to you, but maybe not to the next person. That’s why films like “The Atomic States of America” are so important–they keep the conversation going about a topic that’s dominated by big money and politics, but affects us all.

New York Contractor Builds Passive House out of Salvaged Materials

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:06:24 +0000

Here is a short video we threw together of the Passive House renovation in Harlem. The video mostly discusses the budgeting of the project.

Now that the construction is for the most part done I think that our initial budget of $175/sq.ft is not sustainable. Of course it is great for the client in the long run. But as a company that practices the triple bottom line - people, planet, profit - our budget did not satisfy all three items.

Out of the three I can say without a doubt the planet was benefited by this job. We built a Passive House. We salvaged almost everything to build the house, creating a negative impact on the dump, meaning the house removed more garbage from the dump than it created.

Unfortunately the other two items – people and profit – did not get a fair deal. The workers were not paid enough, the client is not happy and the company did not make enough of a profit. Workers and company need to be taken care of in order for us to continue to make a meaningful impact on the world. Happy clients means more opportunities to build green.

The clients came to us with a very tight budget, $800,000, which is not enough for the scope of the complete gut rehab Passive House. $1,200,000 would have been more realistic.

But being realistic in not what got Eco Brooklyn to where it is now. You don’t start a cutting edge green building company because you are realistic. You start it because you are deeply idealistic and willing to sacrifice everything in the hope that it will make a difference to the world. There are huge risks to this.

So in that spirit we took on the job, our main goal to find a way to build a cutting edge green home on an affordable budget. We accomplished this, so from that point of view it was a great success.

But the clients are not happy and the company was hit hard financially. It may seem odd that the clients are not happy given they gained a $1 million plus house for $800K. We literally saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars all the while helping the environment.

But to achieve that we all had to make sacrifices. The main sacrifice was that as a company we could not afford to hire enough management. The job process was rocky. A green company needs to be even better organized than other companies because we are dealing with new cutting edge technologies with steep learning curves and we salvage materials thus we can’t tightly control the delivery time of materials.

This lack of management meant details were missed and client/contractor interaction was not as common. So even though behind the scenes we felt we were performing miracles to save the client money and add value to their home, the client did not see this.

The client simply felt they were paying what to them felt like a lot of money and we were not delivering as smoothly as they wanted. Because they don’t have a good grasp of what things cost it did not matter how many times we told them they would never be able to get this value elsewhere on their budget.

And when they did look elsewhere for comparison they saw crappy building with nice fixtures – the so called luxury condo that looks like a million dollars for the first couple years and costs a fortune to run. When you compare that to our building that does not look as fancy they felt shortchanged.

Never mind ours costs nothing to run and is built to last a hundred years. Those things are not as sexy as sparkling appliances and brand new moldings.

So we felt we were loosing our battle with the clients. It was very frustrating because we believe deeply that the building we made is decades ahead of any building built in the city today.

Core Values

In hindsight the main conflict was between the company’s and the client’s core values.

The company’s core value is clearly to put the benefit of the planet before anything else, with the understanding that by doing this we are benefiting ourselves as well. And in this case we did it to a fault (we should have done less for the planet and more for ourselves in order to continue strong in the long run).

But going balls out for the environment is both our strength and weakness.

The clients core value was to put their own benefit before anything else. This is not to say they did not care about Eco Brooklyn or the environment. But like most people, at the top of list is their own financial security, their family and their home, and when possible, but only when possible they consider the rest of the world.

I get that. I am a family man.

But I am also a green builder and sometimes things get complicated.

The problem was that we feel looking out for the environment is the best thing we can do for the client in the long run, even if it means less of a perfect construction process in the short run. The client however just wants a home for their family. Getting that done is challenge enough, never mind some idealistic and abstract global thinking.

Because of this we found ourselves at odds. For us if we could help the environment more we would. Even at the expense of short term discomforts and stress imposed by our main mistake – not budgeting for enough management and budgeting too much for the green building items – which arose from our over ambitious attempt to build a home for hundreds of thousands less than normally it would cost.

The client however found this inexcusable. If it is a choice to go some time without water in order to get gray water plumbing installed or skip the gray water and have water for their kids to take a bath they pick the later.

Unfortunately we were doing the building and not them. And we are very hard headed.

We picked to do the gray water, which delayed the job and meant the clients went without water for longer. Inexcusable in their eyes. Simply bad management. In our eyes it was a small sacrifice for something that will benefit the planet for many years to come…..which in turn benefits them.

It wasn’t like we expected the client to sacrifice alone. Eco Brooklyn always sacrificed first. If we found a way to satisfy the client and the environment at the cost of our profit then we made sure we did that first. Our priorities were planet, client then us.

Maybe we are wrong. Maybe that priority serves nobody. But I have this idea that we are connected and the ecology is in a lot worse shape than we are. Since we are ecology that needs to be dealt with first……?

But when the client is spending their hard earned money and the feel like the second fiddle, good will goes out the window fast and they stopped caring for us.

Towards the end of the job when we realized our ecological zeal had put our finances in tight stretches we got no mercy from the clients. In their memory was the lack of water and they made sure to withhold money accordingly. Water is just an example our of many conflicts of core values that arose.

What have I learned from this?

I can’t expect others to sacrifice for my cause. Next time I will only take on clients who can afford $1,200,000 and be done with it. They will get the job they were promised and I will be able to build houses that harm the environment a lot less.

This means that many people will be priced out and not benefit from Eco Brooklyn’s amazing green building.

But I have learned the hard way that when things get tight people hunker down and look out for themselves. It is about survival and humans can be the most brutal creatures on earth when they feel their own is being threatened.

I can’t put myself in that position of dealing with clients like that. Nor can I put the clients in that position. The clients of this house are scared. They feel we managed the job recklessly and this puts them at risk.

When they came to us they entrusted us as professionals to guide them in the building of a green home. They had no idea how much emphasis we put on green and at some point they wondered if we even cared about their home.

So in the future we won’t try the affordable green building thing because we can’t trust the client will be as willing as we are to build green. Instead we will charge. That way it won’t be a choice between having water on time or having a gray water system. We will have a budget to do both on time.

The clients of our current house had a tough time of it. I think with time they will forget the discomforts of the building process. As that fades they will see the value of the house. They might even be grateful towards us. But I doubt it.

Would I do it again? Yes. I think the struggle was worth the gain. It is an amazing house.

It is the first time in the history of building that a Passive House was built with such a high percentage of salvaged materials. It is revolutionary. And we did it not on some plot of land in Oregon but in one of the most expensive places to build on earth. For the price of a crap “luxury condo”!

But like all revolutions it was painful. And I am hurting more than anyone. I made sure I put my money where my mouth was. The clients probably will never understand that. But that is ok. I care about the house that we brought into existence.

When we are all dead that house will still be a wonderful home for families. That is a great gift. It is the least I can do for the planet and my fellow humans.

Here is the video that prompted this post.

The Cost of Your Carbon Footprint

Yi Deng — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:32:33 +0000

Carbon footprint. CO2 emissions. Low carbon. Carbon neutral.

More and more, businesses eagerly attach themselves to buzzwords like these in order to present an environmentally-friendly face to today’s green-conscious market.

I learned a new one the other day: “carbon offset.”

What is it?

Carbon offset providers, like carbonfund.org, offer companies and individuals the opportunity to become carbon neutral by applying “carbon credits” against their carbon output for the year. The process is simple: you donate money, which the service passes on to a certified project of your choice.

Carbon offset projects contribute positively to the environment through methods like generating renewable energy, increasing energy efficiency, or planting trees. An example project might be a small hydroelectric plant in India that produces sustainable energy without the need for a dam. The plant reduces local air pollution and creates job opportunities, producing more benefits than just carbon reduction.

Carbonfund has excellent resources for calculating exactly how much carbon you or your business generates. You can input details down to how many reams of copy paper you use every year.

By many accounts, Carbonfund is a reputable middleman. They’ve helped a lot of busy people do their part to save the world with just a credit card. Their list of “partners” includes hundreds of companies, plus nonprofits, government institutions, and schools. Their financial comportment is probably not sketchy, as they’ve uploaded tax information for public scrutiny.

How much does it cost?

If you’re in a hurry, Carbonfund will give you a rough estimate of how much you’d have to donate to be guilt-free for one year, based on head count: $240 for an “individual offset,” $360 for a small company of 1-5 employees, and so on.

You can also offset specific items: for example, paying $11.33 will absolve you of the crime of one flight up to 6,000 miles. Gift certificates are also available, at a rate of $10 per ton of carbon offset. Nothing says “Happy Birthday” like “I want to wipe your footprints off the face of the earth.”

Exactly how much would it cost us to offset Eco Brooklyn’s carbon footprint? I inputted our company’s stats into Carbonfund’s nifty calculator.

Tiny home office, skeleton crew of managers, workers, and interns. One old truck (no option for “veggie oil,” alas). No copy paper. We make maybe $1oo worth of CO2 every year. Mostly because we take up space and breathe. We can’t really help that.

That calculation doesn’t take into account our commitment to green methods. Our reliance on local sourcing methods, salvaged materials, passive house-style energy conservation, bicycles and public transportation already put our carbon output far below the average, and that’s without accounting for all the green roofs and sustainable landscaping projects we’ve installed.

So what’s in it for me?

You get a nifty logo to put on your website.

You also get a suite of other publicity and networking benefits, like being listed as a “partner” on Carbonfund’s site and being able to connect with other “partners.”

$360 and we could be officially carbon free. Certified guilt free. Is it so simple? Should it be?

I’m not doubting the networking powers of gathering like-minded companies in a common cause, or the potential of providing an easy way for people to make a little bit of a difference, but there’s a striking disconnect between the difference you make and what you’re making up for.

Paying to “offset” your carbon doesn’t mean you’ve changed anything about how you run your business. Making up for your carbon footprint isn’t a commitment to changing where those expenditures came from. It’d be like hiring a maid to follow you and mop up your footprints, while continuing to stomp around in muddy boots.

Carbon offset is one more thing a forward-thinking company could look into in order to become truly carbon neutral, but it’s not a substitute for going green. The Carbonfree badge does a pretty good job of making a company look green, but it’s not a substitute for a business philosophy that strives for lower carbon emissions.

Carbonfund encourages people to “reduce what you can” and “offset what you can’t,” but a modest one-time payment sounds a lot easier than making a dedicated effort to change how you live. Why change, if you can just pay to have your mess cleaned up? It’s even tax-deductible.

So for a couple hundred dollars, what you get is a small stake in saving the world. And a “green” mask that lets you milk today’s environmentally-conscious consumers.

You decide which is worth it.

More food for thought: a panel of experts, including Carbonfund.org president Eric Carlson, discuss whether carbon offset is a solution to climate change or a loophole that can subvert it.

Building For the Climate Apocalypse

Yi Deng — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:32:53 +0000

First 2000, and now 2012: Years in which people think the world might possibly end.

The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low. Sometimes TV makes me wonder if there are people who think a 2012 apocalypse is more plausible than global warming.

Watching GOP candidates in debate is a bittersweet experience. On one hand, the stupid things they occasionally blurt out invariably wind up on YouTube for my amusement.

You-becky-becky becky-becky-stan-stan, anyone?

On the other hand, these guys have a fair shot at becoming arguably the most powerful person in the world. That’s where the bitter comes in. They speak in a sober, defiantly ignorant voice, with the seeming expectation that what they don’t know doesn’t matter.

Sometimes it does matter (a combination of egregious dumbness and sexual sketchiness shamed Cain off the stage) but what scares me is when it doesn’t.

Take Rick Santorum, for example. Here’s a short excerpt and transcript from a Q&A session he did in New Hampshire last week.

Someone asked how he integrated recent findings of climate change into his policies. He waved away the whole issue by using scientists, icebergs, and tail-wagging dogs in a meandering metaphor to demonstrate why climate science is not worth considering.

And when he was done talking, people clapped! Kind of half-heartedly, but still! That stopped The only thing more frightening than ignorance is ignorance with power.

Basically, he argued that there are so many factors so we can’t know for sure what’s causing any changes. Nevermind that just about anybody with a lick of sense agrees that we’re making a lot of CO2, which gets stuck in the atmosphere.

Nevermind that nobody knows the perfect method for, oh, say, oil mining, but they rough through it anyway because the result is valuable. Not knowing something doesn’t mean that we should give up; it means we should devote more resources toward finding the answer. Santorum using ambiguity as a reason to disregard the question only draws attention to how his party has utterly failed at giving climate science the support it needs.

Around Christmas, a short piece showed up in the New York Times about how climate science is stagnating, despite 2011 being one of the most extreme weather years on record.

In May of 2011, 100% of Texas was abnormally dry. 48% was officially in exceptional drought conditions–that’s even more extreme than “extreme drought.”

At the other extreme, New Jersey had an extreme winter: 50.7 inches (more than four feet) fell in my hometown of New Brunswick. I’ve lived there for 15 years but can count the white Christmases we’ve had on one hand.

These are quick and dirty examples of extreme weather conditions with immediate effects at home. Objective truths about global warming will emerge as trends in data analysis performed by climate scientists, and I’d like these truths to emerge before they show up as three feet of snow on my car every other week.

It’s true that there are hundreds of factors that contribute to climate change, but it’s stubbornly naive to claim as Santorum does that CO2, as a byproduct of industrial processes, is not the primary actor. It’s true that climate science and efforts to change energy use in major industries can incur significant costs, but so can bad weather. The final cost of this year’s weather extremes is still being tallied, but will likely surpass $50 million. That’s in comparison to a typical year that costs the U.S. $3 or $4 billion.

Making sense of these changing weather patterns will require scientists to analyze large amounts of data, integrating trends over years and millions of square miles. They need personnel, and concerted support from the Federal government, not half-assed pooh-poohing from a man who could well become President.

The GOP in general sets a bad example by blocking efforts to organize and increase funding for climate research initiatives. Republicans overwhelmingly deny the general consensus on global warming, disparaging it instead as a “propaganda attempt” by the Obama administration.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy still finance climate research, but many scientists find that there’s not enough to go around.

This research also has valuable practical applications. Our company, for example, depends on climate data to calculate things like insulation thickness, heating and cooling loads, and gutter sizes. We’re a green contractor, so energy efficiency is more crucial to our calculations, but every building depends on this information being accurate. The more efficient our homes, the more money clients save.

Global change affects everyone, not just Americans, so hopefully other governments will have more sense than Congress and fund this crucial research. Passive houses, for example, have greater momentum in Europe than in the U.S., so more resources are available to passive builders and passive houses are cheaper to build.

And what does all this have to do with Eco Brooklyn, beyond normal climate calculations? As green contractors, we obviously take the local environment of each home into consideration when designing a plan for energy efficiency. Compare that with, say, a large non-green building company like Toll Brothers, who may build the same exact house in Texas as in Nebraska.

Now that the environment is hitting higher record temperatures and precipitation levels than ever, Eco Brooklyn is venturing into what we call “Survival Building.”

We’ve started taking examples from extreme climates and integrating them into New York’s brownstones, in order to prepare them against heat waves, snap freezes, and flash floods. We take inspiration from the “Earthship” and “Passive House” movements, which focus on installing tight insulation and maximizing solar gain to reduce heating and cooling needs. These homes remain naturally cool in the summer and warm in the winter. We put up a blog post recently that explains these concepts in detail.

Our our buildings consider rainwater runoff seriously. We build green roofs, dry wells, rain gardens, and other water harvesting systems to reduce flooding.

We use clay walls in our houses that work like adobe walls in Pueblo architecture. If they can endure the New Mexico heat, they can handle New York heat waves, with the benefit of retaining heat in winter. Our passive houses are sealed tight against energy loss, but the envelope also protects against extreme wind or rain.

Eco Brooklyn’s brownstones are green fortresses.

So even if we see the beginnings of a climate apocalypse in 2012, we’ll be ready, and if Santorum gets elected, at least we’ll be insulated against his hot air.

Chemicals in Our Society

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:54:11 +0000

As a New York green contractor we are especially sensitive to the effect chemicals have on humans. New York city has many environmental stressors. You have noise, lots of people, lots of cars and a million other things in the environment that cause stress to the body.

There are also a million chemicals that contact our bodies and cause stress. Cleaning products, car fumes, cigarettes, rodent poison, offgassing plastics, dies… the list is endless.

Then you have chemicals that our society has decided for whatever reason that we need to be exposed to them. The two most prominent ones are vaccines and chemicals in the water. Collectively we consume these chemicals under the pretense that their harm outweighs their benefits.

Maybe…I don’t know enough to say for sure. But I’ve seen enough to be deeply suspicious of whether they are needed. I vaccinated my children with the most prominent vaccines but I did it with deep reservation. Likewise I drink the tap water using filters like Brita. But I am aware of some of the facts around chlorine and fluoride. And these facts are not comforting.

Check out this video and do some research online. Try to look through the hype and just stick with the facts. I think it is something we as a society should be discussing more, specifically the deep conflict of interest between chemical companies seeking profit at the expense of peoples’ health.

The Weather Underground Movie

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:07:29 +0000

Since the Occupy Wall Street events this fall I have immersed myself in information that questions existing paradigms and searches for solutions to current problems. I’ve always done this, and as a green builder I do it on a daily basis, but the recent Occupy Wall Street events has given my ongoing education a focus and timely reference point.

This evening I watched a poignant documentary “The Weather Underground“, which chronicles the efforts of a small group of white students in the late ’60′s and early 70′s who planted bombs around the US to raise awareness of the atrocities of the Vietnam war.

The movie is powerful because these people are smart, conscientious individuals who did not take their acts of violence lightly. The movie explores their insights into the successes and failures of using violence to combat violence.

The conclusion? Well, there is no easy response to the Vietnam genocide and how we should have stopped it. Are some acts so horrible that violence to stop it is justified? Most police and military forces would say yes. And yes. And yes many times over until the threat has been obliterated.

Whether that threat is a black man in the ghetto or an Arab half way across the globe we, “we” being those who are not in the police or military view finder, find it acceptable that the “threat” be killed regardless of whether they deserve it.

Or maybe it isn’t acceptable but we let it happen every day without so much as a pause in our lives. We accept the party line that the military is looking out for our interests even if we know it is a lie. Such a convenient lie it is.

And maybe these people are threats, if our interests happen to be cheap oil, cheap sneakers and large amounts of easy to digest entertainment.

But when it is a civilian who does something violent to try to stop violence such actions of counter brutality are not allowed nor socially acceptable. Civilians are expected to meet violence with non-violence. A civilian who meets oppression and violence with counter violence is called a terrorist time and time again.

Why is this? Is it just the people in power trying to keep it so?

This strikes a chord with my life. My father was not part of the Weather Underground but he did belong to a similar group during that time. He was accused by the government of setting off pipe bombs, one in front of the Berkeley court house that was sending draft resisters to high security prison and another in front of the Bank of America that was the main financier of Napalm.

Idealistic hippie or dangerous terrorist? Interpol and the FBI felt the later and I spent my first 17 years traveling the world under my parents’ wing as political refugees.

Did my father make a difference? He made a difference to me. I wouldn’t be a passionate green builder dead set on making the world a more ecological place if it weren’t for him.

The hippies dropped out and opened their minds to new ways of being, some good, some not. Either way they learned a lot, if anything how to learn itself, and passed that learning on to their children, most of whom dropped back into society with that knowledge.

So what do we do now. We don’t have a Vietnam to rage against. We have the less visible but more dangerous ongoing destruction of the planet. Us humans are destroying the planet with such violence and heartlessness that any informed green builder knows they are almost symbolic in their effectiveness against the machine of destruction.

Yet like the Weather Underground, an isolated small group that did little to stop Vietnam’s war machine on the surface, green builders must see that symbolism is powerful. Green builders are archetypes where success is not measured in trees saved but in torches carried.

And as long as the torch is being carried, no matter by how small a group and no matter how large the darkness, we will have hope. It is in carrying the environmental torch that we stay alive, regardless of how much ecological destruction is around us.

I don’t see much use in meeting violence with violence. Trying to kill the corporate machine is like trying to kill a monster with endless heads. The success and downfall of capitalism is that it has no moral judgement. You can’t kill something if it is heartless.

But meeting violence with passion, now that is a winning strategy.

I have looked deeply into the soul of our society and have concluded that we are fucked. We are on a crash course with ecological destruction for the sake of greed, power and the blind genetic imperative to spread the human seed as far as humanly possible.

And so I have thrown up my hands and decided I have two options. One, build a pipe bomb and, like the Monkey Wrench Gang, try to wreak as much havoc as possible against the machine of ecological doom. Or two, create a reality where my existence is not part of that machine.

Not a reality like the mind numbing lala land of mass media and material consumption, which is the current solution to numbing the pain we feel as we destroy our own global body.

But a reality that looks at reality with brutal honesty and takes one step, no mater how difficult and painful, yet so amazingly liberating, to a greener personal life. That existence may be lonely. It may be difficult. In fact it may not work at all.

But you just get back up. And before you know it a day has gone by where you didn’t take part in anything too destructive. You may have even helped grow something green, as simple and small as that may seem.

But then a strange thing happens. I have seen it happen in my life and I have seen it happen in every successful revolution in the history or humanity:

You meet somebody else who is holding the same torch as you.

A friend. A person who speaks your language in the babel of destructive insanity. Even if it is a passing in the darkness it is enough to keep the flame alive and even brighten it.

And all of a sudden you aren’t as freaky and alone as you thought you were, not that it matters because by then you are pretty used to your way of life. It takes balls and stubbornness and a deep passion to stick to what you know is right. And sometimes what you thought was right is wrong and you have to continue seeking.

But you learn it is the seeking that is important so you aren’t too worried when you fuck up. Well, worried maybe a little, but you get used to making mistakes and learning from them.

Then you meet somebody else. Over time you have a little group of people who experience life like you. You may be in the belly of the beast but together you have your own parallel universe. This is not a universe in reaction to something bad. This is a universe in creation of something good. You aren’t there in opposition anything but rather in search of the very best way you can be.

And in the end, who cares if what you discover is right or wrong. Or right again. Because over time you live what is true to you and what you do today becomes yesterdays history, your history, like a stick to lean on as you walk into the future.

So yea the Weather Underground may have been stupid kids in a stupid society or visionaries in a stupid society…..but at what point does that torch become society and back again?

We are society and society is us. We are the machine that kills nature to grow and we are the nature that is killed. It ain’t easy sorting it all out but god knows we try. And so did the Weather Underground. And for that I salute them with pride and honor to be part of their tribe, no matter how confused we are.

Greenwashing At Its Best

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:50:44 +0000

I heard somewhere that the building industry is more honest than other industries when it comes to greenwashing. Building only lies 96% of the time as opposed to the average of 98%.

I don’t know if that is true but Eco Brooklyn tries not to focus on negative elements like greenwashing or environmental destruction because it would be too damn depressing. So we focus on solutions almost exclusively. If you want to know how bad a state the world is in there are plenty of sources for that. Solutions are not as abundant.

But I just got such a prime example of blatant greenwashing I just had to share it. What these people are selling is so far from environmentally friendly that I can only think it is an open joke. The people selling know it is a joke, the people buying know it is a joke, and the whole thing is a farce to make more money with wanton disregard for anyone or anything but themselves.

So here is the email I got. From a guy called “Jay Rich”. I kept it’s formatting since it is so hideous:

Subject: Luxe Interiors + Design celebrates living GREEN with its SPECIAL EDITION…LUXE.ECO

Dear Sir or Madam,

Sustainable living is luxe, and Luxe Interiors + Design celebrates living green.

Poised to debut in May 2012, Luxe.ECO will feature the cutting edge of sustainable high-end design, building and luxury products, showcasing award-winning initiatives by internationally known interior designers, architects and custom home builders.

Luxe.ECO will be mailed to a proprietary list of top trade professionals including architects, interior designers and custom home builders.

Our wealthiest homeowners nationwide (450,000 high net worth subscribers in total) who have expressed an interest in sustainable design will receive copies as well.

Requested copies for distribution will also include design centers, select showrooms and targeted trade, consumer and green events.

As audited by Wealth Engine, our readers have an average household income of $388,000, an average net worth of $11.7 million and an average real estate value of $1.5 million.  This demographic has the drive, initiative and means to make a considerable impact.

Nationwide, Luxe.ECO will also be available at Hudson News, Barnes & Noble and at private airports.

·        Luxe Interiors + Design is up over 2010 with a 37.6% increase atBarnes & Noble!

·        Luxe Interiors + Design sales at all the Hudson Newsstands are UP 78.5% for the first 8 months of 2011 versus the first 8 months of 2010!

I am currently scheduling 30 minute appointments beginning January 2, 2012 to discuss this SPECIAL EDITION of Luxe Interiors & Design.

Rates as low as $495 to advertise in our first ever Luxe.ECO annual edition.

Media kit upon request.

Feel free to email or call me prior to the New Year to book a date/time that is most convenient for you.

Best regards,

Jay Rich
Senior Account Executive
LUXE Interiors + Design

A Publication of Sandow Media

www.LuxeSource.com

3731 NW 8th Avenue
Boca Raton, FL 33431
(Tel)   561-208-3927
(Cell)  561-400-0033
(Fax)  866-898-0902
jayrich@sandowmedia.com
www.sandowmedia.com