Boston has mandated the nation’s first green building code for private projects.Photo courtesy Willem van Bergen via FlickrAdapted and cross-posted from Climate Progress.
Humans have officially made their home in the concrete jungle. Ours is the first generation in which most of the world’s population lives in cities.
With 6 billion people on the planet, and 2 billion more expected within 20 years, the race to our cities and the slums and vast sprawl surrounding some of them will only accelerate. Already, our metropolises — 21 already have populations of 10 million or more — consume about three-quarters of the world’s energy, releasing vast quantities of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that warm the planet.
Protecting our climate, in other words, means redefining what urban means. Yet much coverage of climate action dismisses local and state government actions in favor of splashy (or, recently, dismal) international announcements and would-be efforts.
That’s a mistake, suggests the Pew Foundation, which credits cities and local governments for having cut more than 23 million tons of greenhouse gasses — equivalent ... Read more
