What It Means 2 B Green

Our Green Job Trainers have just graduated. They are certified in asbestos, lead, hazwoper, OSHA 10 construction, mold remediation and contruction, and received training in phase1&2 energy audits. If you are an employeer seeking workers in this area please contact DWEJ and ask for Roshani Dantas or leave a comment on this blog

Greensburg, KS

decimated by a tornado last May, Greensburg is rebuilding green: all city buildings must be built to LEED standards. nice!

http://www.greensburgks.org/

Pittsburgh, PA

Andrew Carnegie’s Steel City is investing in a new, green image:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-june08/green_04-25.html

come on, Detroit! there are lots of grassroots efforts to remake Detroit in this fashion, but it also takes city leadership to make it all coalesce and bring the publicity it needs to draw green-seeking business, industry and skill

This video shows the first session at MIT’s “Changing Cities” Symposium held this April.

Sustaining Cities: Environment, Economic Development, and Empowerment

April 4, 2008

Broad Institute

MODERATOR: Lawrence J. Vale SM ‘88
Vale’s DUSP website

PANELISTS:
Judith Layzer Ph.D. ‘99: Linde Career Development Associate Professor of Environmental Policy, MIT
Layzer’s DUSP website

Jason Corburn MCP ‘96, PhD ‘02: Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley
Corburn’s Berkeley website

J. Phillip Thompson: Associate Professor of Urban Politics, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT

Thompson’s Urban Studies listing

Chris Zegras ‘01 SM, MCP, PhD ‘05: Ford Career Development Assistant Professor of Transportation and Urban Planning, MIT
Zegras’ MIT website

Adil Najam CE’96, PhD’ 01: Fredrick Pardee Professor of Global Policy and Director, Pardee Center for the Study of Long-Term Future, Boston University
Najam’s BU website

ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION:
These five speakers grapple with shifting notions of sustainability.

Judith Layzer advocates “strong sustainability” in lieu of the conventional approach, which imagines human-made capital and technology can always substitute for the wealth of resources drawn from the natural world. Development and affluence have instead degraded ecosystems. Strong sustainability “entails living within the productive capacity of nature…meeting the needs of the current generation as opposed to their demands.” Wealthy societies must adopt laws to contain population growth and curb consumption, and develop regional cooperation and fair trade policies.

Jason Corburn describes an environmental justice framework that connects ecological, economic and social justice issues, especially in urban settings. Corburn asks about the distribution of environmental goods and evils (such as parks and pollution); who participates in rule-making and enforcement; and how environmental justice evolves institutionally, and is enforced. The key lesson of the past is that voluntary enforcement of environmental justice guidelines don’t work, and we must “find a legal or regulatory stick to implement” its goals.

“Where I’m from, I see this green thing as a rich people’s movement,” says
Phillip Thompson, who was a housing manager in New York. Environmentalists pushed clean air laws that ended the incineration of garbage — but left housing projects with an unfunded mandate to bag their own waste. Thompson acknowledges the energy crisis is an emergency for many lower-income city dwellers hit with high heating costs: “We can’t do affordable housing if it isn’t green.” But transforming cities into affordable and green places means systemic change. Who, for example, will pay for outfitting buildings in poorer neighborhoods with energy conserving technology, and who will train and educate the workforce required for this transformation?

“What are we trying to sustain?” asks Chris Zegras. He believes the answer is access to opportunities that enable development. How do societies expand accessibility without depriving future generations of the ability to do so? Zegras says it’s hard to argue the importance of climate change to someone “who travels 3 ½ hours a day on a bus to get to a job, and half the salary is eaten up by the bus ride.” First, we must alleviate fundamental issues of accessibility for the poor: their lack of affordable transportation and proximity to schools and jobs. Zegras recommends addressing the worldwide crisis in transportation, in part through such innovations as bike and car sharing.

Looking down on Earth as if it were one country, says Adil Najam, you’d have to conclude it is poor, extremely divided, degraded, poorly governed and unsafe – a Third-world country. Addressing the environment turns on development, since “the poor are hit first and hit most.” The climate question has moved from discussion of molecules to adaptation, but we remain largely ignorant about how to mitigate and adapt, Najam says. Worse, nations are off on the wrong foot, measuring the problem in terms of only “emissions and dollars.” When a Bangladeshi fisherman loses his work to rising waters, what is the cost? “We need to add the currency of livelihood,” concludes Najam.

NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:27:07.

Play Video

Lawrence Vale introduces the session, and briefly introduces each speaker in turn.

At 2:24, Judith Layzer begins.

At 12:23, Jason Corburn begins.

At 23:19, Phillip Thompson begins.

At 39:22, Chris Zegras begins.

At 1:01:45, Adil Najam begins.

At 1:22:02, Vale opens Q&A.

The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2008-07-10.

DWEJ now has a blog so to start us off, tell what Environmental Justice is to you and how can you personally apply it into your life?