The city’s convoluted website now features Conserve Chicago Together, a portal to the various environmental initiatives around town. It’s worth a look.

Salon has a story about greenwashed monster houses:

The American proclivity for living large does more than raise questions about whether a 4,000-square-foot single family home should ever qualify as a “green” residence. It also calls into question one of the fundamental tenets of sustainability — that market demand for green products and technologies will save us from environmental apocalypse. If we all go solar, if we install rainwater catchment systems and use sustainably harvested lumber, so the logic goes, then there’s no need to deprive ourselves of the luxuries that space — and the furniture and accessories to fill it — affords. But the issue of consumption, not to mention overconsumption, is curiously absent from the sustainability discourse. And in an era characterized by unprecedented consumer wealth, this could be the movement’s fatal flaw.

Author Linda Baker even addresses McDonough’s “eco-effective” argument and the cherry-tree metaphor. Well, sure, but until we do have a broad range of materials which have zero or net-positive environmental impact, improving efficiency and reducing consumption will still be important strategies for managing environmental impacts. In the meantime, what green designers should be doing to improve their eco-effectiveness is to follow the dictums of books like “The Not So Big House”: help their clients understand that bigger or more is not always better, and that thoughtful design solutions can help them do more with less.

In a cheeky quote, architect George Ostrow, principal of Seattle’s Velocipede Architects, compares the “green” McMansion to the hybrid SUV: greenwashed contradictions, odd expressions of a society raised to believe that hyperconsumption will solve all ills. Overconsumption causing environmental problems? Well, the solution is the same: buy some more stuff!

Interestingly, the article concludes with a look at modern modular housing, which for now is mostly wishful thinking but seems poised to take off.

Grist has an interesting article about a green loft rehab in Brooklyn, undertaken by a former Transportation Alternatives staffer.

This press release from the City of Chicago features a laughable picture of Mayor Daley but also has some very reasonable, effective tips on conserving natural resources. Kudos to the city for being (once again) forthright about the need to promote transportation alternatives — now, if only they were a little more publicly willing to speak up for transit, walking, and cycling in their times of need.

James K. Galbraith makes a compelling case for “natural capitalism” as an economic strategy for the new, new Democrats. Deficit reduction to bring down interest rates (a la Rubinomics) won’t solve today’s economic problem — namely, businesses awash in overcapacity, government retrenching domestically to overextend itself overseas, and consumers propping up the whole deal by maxing out every last source of credit (particularly their home equity. Meanwhile, the indicators don’t look good; we can’t count on foreign capital to keep us afloat forever.

Instead, we need new drivers of economic growth and job creation, and this time a little more durable than building fiber optic lines so that Tuvaluans can buy kitty litter online.

We need, in short, a patient strategy for social investment — to meet pressing national objectives while creating jobs, recognizing that success will take determination, time, and money.

What objectives? The foremost candidate is sustainable energy security. Reducing our exposure to the world oil economy is a vast public challenge. It would move us toward compact cities, new transport systems, and renewable energy sources, as well as toward much more conservation and efficiency in the use of oil. That is the sort of national effort that would bring good jobs in quantity to the next generation, leaving our children and grandchildren better prepared to live well — and in peace.

How to pay for it? Of course we must repeal George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy. We should also forthrightly consider tax incentives to reward efficient energy use and to penalize waste. But for a project of national reconstruction and investment, much of the necessary funds can, and properly should be, borrowed. Policy should do what is necessary to restore jobs. Full employment, sustainable development, and national security are proper goals for policy. Deficit reduction, as such, is not. Public debt to enrich the wealthy is one thing. Debt to rebuild the country is something else again. If we have to go that route, we should do it and not look back.

Meanwhile, the right way to display fiscal discipline would be to separate capital from current expenditures in the budget, leaving the former free from any cap.

Indeed, such a forward-thinking initiative wouldn’t just increase productivity, reduce our environmental burden, and generate short- and long-term jobs; it could also save governments the tremendous sums that currently go to subsidize our petroleum habit.

On another front, I recently found the Apollo Alliance — a coalition of environmental and labor groups that is starting to make the broader case for clean-energy economic growth. The Apollo Project is an appropriately optimistic metaphor, but other examples of capital investments (the Interstates, the Marshall Plan) paying off many times over abound in the postwar period.

What’s even more exciting about many clean-energy solutions is that many substitute human capital for natural capital as an input — that is, the goods require fewer natural resources but more labor to produce. For instance, building houses in cities is inherently more of a challenge than building them in the suburbs, requiring more and better skilled labor. Some may view that as inefficient, but I would rather spend my money on people than on consuming nonrenewable resources. Best yet, jobs in sectors like transportation and construction can’t be offshored.

Unfortunately, many Earth Day activities focus on feel-good but ultimately ineffective ways to “save the earth.”

Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation offers the Nature Challenge, “the top 10 ways you can conserve nature.” Not surprisingly, three have to do with household operation, two with food, and 4.5 with driving.

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home and appliances
3. Replace dangerous pesticides with alternatives
4. Eat�meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and produced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support car-free alternatives
10. Learn more and share with family and friends

To satisfy our craving for a faster world, we burn stored energy laid down over time — 400 years worth every year.

From our irony department: “Global warming, which most climate experts blame mainly on large-scale burning of oil and other fossil fuels, is interfering with efforts in Alaska to discover yet more oil.”