Global Green helps N.O. use less energy

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 25, 2008 - Page: 15A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — Urging the use of more energy-efficient homes and discussing how to cut climate change pollution are parts of a new national initiative announced Thursday to reduce global warming-related pollution.

“New Orleans is a front line for sea level rise in this country,” said Matt Peterson, president of Global Green USA.

Reducing the amount of global warming pollution could help reduce the projected sea level rise if nothing is done, Peterson said.

Even with building levees higher, climate change is expected to increase sea levels, putting coastal cities like New Orleans at even greater risk in the future, Peterson said.

“We’re talking 150 million people who live along the coast of the United States,” Peterson said during a news conference at the New Orleans Port Authority. Many of the at-risk communities will be low-income communities, he said.

Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., co-chair of the initiative, agreed.

“Our coastal communities, where half of our population lives, are most vulnerable to climate change,” he said.

This new campaign will focus on increasing cities’ and states’ green building efforts to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere and that contribute to global climate change.

Global Green is the United States portion of the Green Cross International, created by former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and has been involved in green rebuilding in New Orleans since after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In New Orleans’ Holy Cross neighborhood, Global Green’s project involves building energy-efficient homes and buildings complete with solar panels and other technologies to use about 75 percent less energy than typical buildings. The operation of buildings and homes contribute to more than half of all greenhouse emissions, Peterson said.

“So much of it is just operating the building,” Peterson said. “Even with McCain or Obama in the White House, we still have to get our states to act. We can’t wait for Washington.”

Part of that work involves getting technologies — some of them old technologies — approved for use, he said.

For example, at the Holy Cross project, the plan was to use large water collection cisterns which would provide water for flushing toilets and landscape watering. “We can’t get the state to authorize us to use it,” Peterson said.