Andy Lipkis on The Importance of Smart Green

Andy Lipkis, president and founder of TreePeople offers up in a LA Time OpEd a fine example of an idea we talk about in decision making called reframing, or perhaps looking at the problem with fresh eyes.  The topic is the apparently pending massive infusion of stimulus President Obama plans to kick off first thing next year.  Lipkis cautions against simply turning on the funding tap for projects that have been sitting for ages, and instead take a fresh look at the current state of things.  For example, consider the subject of the Los Angeles River . . .

Listening closely to the conversation about the projects that are on the table, you soon realize that many have been waiting on the shelf for years. They are old. The problem with old projects is they often reflect a paradigm that is more than 100 years old. They inadvertently waste resources and pollute, leaving huge downstream costs in public health and national security.

Here’s one example of the old paradigm: the Los Angeles River. To solve a flooding problem, we built one of the largest concrete ditches in the world to route the river to the sea as rapidly as possible. This project currently costs us billions of dollars in water that now needs to be pumped to L.A. from hundreds of miles away. The rain that actually falls here naturally gets shunted away from productive use, resulting in the need for enormous end-of-the-pipe sewage treatment plants and leaving the city vulnerable to drought.

. . . which leads to the currently hot concept of “smart green.”  I confess I don’t have a clear sense of what that is, so here’s Andy on that . . .

We can do much better. We can invest in a new kind of projects — “smart green” as opposed to old, gray infrastructure. The former uses an emerging set of technologies based on natural processes that provide multiple bangs for our buck. It provides essential city services while at the same time mitigating climate change and helping us adapt to its consequences, supplying us with sustainable energy, water and green-collar jobs. Being smart and green means working with nature, enhancing its ability to capture, clean and store the water we need, filter the air, reduce waste hauling and make our neighborhoods more livable and beautiful.

Sound impossible? It isn’t. In fact, it’s the job description of the smartest of green infrastructures — a forest. Studies by local engineers and economists along with demonstration projects have shown the practicality and smart economics of bringing functioning forests back into our city.

Tags: AndyLipkis, Tree People, framing, reframing, decision making, decision quality