Permit hell is getting worse

Carol Lloyd has a great piece in the paper today about the nightmare that is known as the San Francisco Department of Building Inspections.

The article tells the story of a woman trying to build a green home with some innovative ideas, such as an equity-sharing model to create new paths into home ownership for her tenants. Sounds like a great things right? Wrong. The city is putting up their usual roadblocks, demonstrating once again it is better to break the rules rather than play by them.

As an architect who has worked in this city for a decade, I routinely will talk our clients out of certain features knowing it will add a roadblock to their permitting process. Sometimes I use "tricks" to get things through that would never occur if we did everything by the book. Ask any good architect and they will tell you stories of how they got this thing approved, or that other thing through... it is part of the game.

But the story shows how a well-intentioned client, and a good architect (Toby Long of CleverHomes), are not welcomed with open arms by the SFDBI. Instead, we have a bureaucratic obstacle course from a department more concerned with liability than with re-building the urban fabric of our beloved city.

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MISSING: 41 square miles of ice.

A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole... ...citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event.

The Ayles Ice Shelf - all 41 square miles of it - broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

We are already beginning to hear increasing reports of these events. Sadly, these will become a daily occurrence in the near future.

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A review of my talk at GreenFest

Victoria wrote a wonderful review of my talk at the GreenFest last month. As one of the editors for the San Francisco local edition of WorldChanging, her words are important and I am honored to even be mentioned.

The GreenFest has always been a difficult place to give a talk. Screaming crowds, cramped quarters and poor AV equipment make it difficult to see and hear the speaker. At this years GreenFest, I had to place the microphone almost directly into my mouth to be heard. Rather than give a presentation, I felt it best to take advantage of the passionate crowd and just answer questions. It was fun, despite the noise issues.

The questions people ask are a type of gauge to determine how far we are progressing.

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Global Green Party

Leonardo DiCaprio & Orlando Bloom with Global Green CEO Matt Petersen

Last night was the star-studded gala event for Global Green. Although the event was a fundraiser, the stars present overshadowed much of the opportunity for people to learn about the issues surrounding our environment. Most of the talk seemed to be about who was there, and not why we were all there. In truth, most gala fundraisers suffer from this to some degree.

Part of this is my own personal reaction to all of the recent attention given to green issues. Part of me is wondering, "Where were all of these people 15 years ago?!" while another part is just happy the environment is finally being taken seriously.

The event demonstrated the power of celebrity and the impact 1000 releatively wealthy people can make. In my mind, it was a success. Today, Leonardo DiCaprio posted some questions about Global Warming as announced at the event.

GreenScore: How green are you?!

Global Action Plan has developed a questionnaire to determine how green is your household, taking into account the energy use, water use, shopping habits and transportation methods.

While some of the questions do not apply, and the test tries to be one thing for every household, the tips at the end are a great bit of advice.

How green are you? GreenScore

New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

*WASHINGTON, DC* –
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation's energy mix.

These are the kind of breakthrus we need!

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Green Roof Teaser

LINK has a great series on Green Building now running on PBS. They interviewed me several times for the show. A teaser clip of it is here.