An excellent article on the subsidies that support growing cotton in Arizona
To understand how federal policies that support the woefully unsustainable cotton farming in the Arizona desert, take a look at this ProPublica article, Holy Crop: How Federal Dollars are Financing the Water Crisis in the West, by Abrahm Lustgarten and Naveena Sadasivam. Four years ago, when I took a sabbatical from BuildingGreen to focus on launching the Resilient Design Institute, I started that sabbatical with a six-week bicycle trip through the Southwest—from San Diego to Houston. (I posted blogs from that trip on my personal website.) One goal of the bike trip was to spend time...
Read MoreResilient Design: Not as mainstream as we’d like
As part of its monthly tracking how the architectural firms are faring, in its latest survey the American Institute of Architects queried members about their resilient design practices. Since “resilient design” is a concept that’s not yet the kind of household word that “sustainability” has become, we’re encouraged at the number of architecture shops that report having done projects that involved resilient design (about a quarter of them) — but at the same time, the numbers indicate that resilient design has a ways to go before it is a mainstream practice...
Read More2012 CERES Insurance Industry Study: Progress Slow, Urgently Needed
Climate-change-related disasters threaten industry profitability, and may drive less-prepared companies from a variety of asset and risk classes. A reduction in the availability and affordability of insurance and risk management services can threaten the economy…
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