Climate Prosperity Project
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The
Climate Prosperity Project is a new economic development partnership
focused on promoting energy independence, preventing climate change,
and protecting the environment by advancing the idea that innovation,
efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of resources is the
best way to increase jobs, incomes, productivity, and competitiveness.
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Benjamin
Franklin
“Less
is the new more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“No problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it.” – Albert Einstein
Climate Prosperity Strategy
One of the greatest barriers to making the public and private investments and policy changes to mitigate climate change and enhance environmental sustainability is the fear that such actions will be too costly and disruptive to economic growth. Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on The Economics of Climate Change provided one important response--that failure to act will be far more costly and detrimental to the economy over the long term, and that the costs of acting soon are relatively manageable, especially compared to the costs of major adaptation once climate change becomes more severe in future decades.
Beyond
the issue of the absolute necessity of climate protection, however,
there still remains deep concern about the possible negative effects of
climate action on economic growth and prosperity. Therefore,
it is becoming increasingly urgent to directly address these concerns
by demonstrating that protecting against climate change by improving
urban sustainability can actually be good for the economy, and improve
the prospects for prosperity, productivity, competitiveness,
efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Firstly, expanded
production of “green” technologies will create many new business and
job opportunities, thus increasing incomes for many people and
institutions. Secondly, energy efficiency, clean technologies, and
renewable energy sources will greatly conserve natural resources and
lead to substantial cost savings in the long run, particularly since
fossil fuel production is peaking globally and the costs will continue
to rise as supplies dwindle and the demand keeps growing. Thirdly,
strengthening “green” infrastructure will reduce vulnerability to harm
from the natural environment due to changes in the weather and other
related factors. For
example, reducing traffic congestion through higher urban densities and
better mass transportation saves time and money and lowers risks of
“oil shocks” and climate disruptions.
Finally,
a greener, cleaner, more conserving of existing land and buildings, and
more pedestrian-friendly urban environment greatly strengthens quality
of life, which is essential for attracting and retaining a highly
skilled workforce. In the new economy
of the 21st
century, which is knowledge and information-based, technology and
communication-intensive, and globally oriented, people are now the
single most important economic asset in the world, more than geographic
location, natural resources, or even financial capital. In order to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce, every urban area
must have a good quality of life, including an attractive and sustainable physical and cultural environment. Thus
for the first time since the Industrial Revolution began three
centuries ago, economic growth is no longer the enemy of environmental
protection. Increasingly, a good environment is essential for a good economy. Global Urban Development has made this same argument for the past six years, at the 2002 United Nations World Summit
on Sustainable Development (“Earth Summit”) in Johannesburg, South Africa and in many other venues. The
framework that we have been using is called “Metropolitan Economic Strategy” in which sustainability and quality
of life are part of the overall mix. This framework, outlined by GUD in various documents such as our 2001 report to
the United Nations on Productive Cities and Metropolitan Economic Strategy,
our 2002 reports to the South African Cities Network and the US Agency
for International Development, and our 2002 report for the National
Governors Association entitled State Policy Approaches to Promote Metropolitan Economic Strategy,
is increasingly becoming part of mainstream economic development and
public policy discourse throughout the world, from the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the World Bank. Given the huge and rapidly escalating challenges of climate change, though, it
is now time to place environmental sustainability at the vital center of economic thinking and action. The
global focus on promoting prosperity must become instead a total
emphasis on generating and maintaining Climate Prosperity and Quality
of Life. Nothing short of this approach will enable human, animal, and plant life to continue
thriving in the 21st century and beyond. The
work that Global Urban Development is doing with the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund in developing a three-year Climate Prosperity Project,
starting with the meeting on The Economic Benefits of Climate Action
held at Pocantico Hills, New York during November 26-28, 2007, is one
early example of much more that needs to occur in terms of economic
research and urban policy innovation. Perhaps
a sign of this new perspective is the international movement for “brownfields” restoration and redevelopment.
The impetus for such public policy intervention came from urban mayors, who faced the problem of environmentally polluted,
damaged, and even in some cases highly toxic, abandoned industrial land and buildings. The
cost of cleaning up the damage is very high, and thus much of this
property has been allowed to sit idle and unused, a clear economic loss.
Through
brownfields initiatives and programs, governments, working with the
private sector, have been able to restore these elements of the urban
environment back to productive use, such that they can be redeveloped
not only for manufacturing but as offices, hotels, stores, and housing. The formerly toxic and derelict American Can Company factory
in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood is now called “The Can Company”, a highly successful commercial and residential
mixed-use development. And
since the infrastructure and transportation services and urban
population is already in place or nearby, cleaning up and redeveloping
brownfields is far more conserving of land than abandoning such sites
and building new facilities on “greenfield” land in the distant suburbs
or exurbs. Clearly,
brownfields restoration and redevelopment is one of the many building blocks of Climate Prosperity Strategy. Similarly, the increasing interest in the use of historic preservation and renovation to encourage reinvestment in
and regeneration of urban neighborhoods is an example of Climate Prosperity. Conserving
older buildings actually generates rising economic values, new
sustainable development, and the growth of jobs, incomes, and business
opportunities.
In the field of real estate development, land conservation has long been recognized as the best way to raise the value
of both existing and new properties. Preserving
and enhancing land for open space, parks, golf courses, lakes,
wetlands, and many related recreational and environmental amenities
(such as attractive view corridors) actually helps generate significant
increases in property values and business profits. In other words, real estate developers
earn more money by building on less land. A
good example of Climate Prosperity Strategy is metropolitan Portland,
Oregon, which since the 1970s has transformed its economy from forest
products to high-technology production, while containing the spread of
suburbanization through an urban growth boundary, building a popular
light-rail transit system, increasing urban densities and revitalizing
neighborhoods, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels
according to the Kyoto Protocols, and reducing vehicle miles traveled
per capita by more than 10 percent, and most importantly, increasing
jobs, raising incomes, expanding capital investment and higher density
development, boosting property values, promoting transit-oriented,
biking and hiking-friendly, walkable, sustainable, and livable
communities, and generating both a more attractive quality of life and
a more dynamic economic future. The recent CEOs for Cities report on Portland’s Green Dividend demonstrates
that metropolitan Portlanders save $1.1 billion annually on reduced
transportation expenses, and with an additional savings of $1.5 billion
per year on reduced commuting and travel time. Local residents
reinvest most of this savings as increased disposable income spent
within the metropolitan economy, further multiplying their substantial
economic benefits from enhanced environmental sustainability. In addition, by
dramatically improving the region’s quality of life and sustainable
lifestyle, metropolitan Portland has attracted and retained a highly
talented and skilled workforce, which has fostered a great deal of
increased business investment and entrepreneurial growth. Chicago’s
Climate Jobs Strategy is taking a comparable approach, with similar
efforts in metropolitan Pittsburgh through the Green Building Alliance
and the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, in the State of
California through the “Green Wave” investment initiative in which the
California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the State Teachers’
Retirement System have invested nearly one half billion dollars in
renewable energy and other environmental technology companies to create
jobs and business opportunities within the state, and in many other
communities, towns, cities, counties, metropolitan regions, and states
across the country. Recently a statewide public policy organization,
Next10, published the California Green Innovation Index to promote greater investment in environmentally sustainable “clean”
technologies and products.
Finally, a greener, cleaner, more conserving of existing land and buildings, and more pedestrian-friendly urban environment greatly strengthens quality of life, which is essential for attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce. In the new economy of the 21st century, which is knowledge and information-based, technology and communication-intensive, and globally oriented, people are now the single most important economic asset in the world, more than geographic location, natural resources, or even financial capital. In order to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce, every urban area must have a good quality of life, including an attractive and sustainable physical and cultural environment. Thus for the first time since the Industrial Revolution began three centuries ago, economic growth is no longer the enemy of environmental protection. Increasingly, a good environment is essential for a good economy.
Global Urban Development has made this same argument for the past six years, at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (“Earth Summit”) in Johannesburg, South Africa and in many other venues. The framework that we have been using is called “Metropolitan Economic Strategy” in which sustainability and quality of life are part of the overall mix. This framework, outlined by GUD in various documents such as our 2001 report to the United Nations on Productive Cities and Metropolitan Economic Strategy, our 2002 reports to the South African Cities Network and the US Agency for International Development, and our 2002 report for the National Governors Association entitled State Policy Approaches to Promote Metropolitan Economic Strategy, is increasingly becoming part of mainstream economic development and public policy discourse throughout the world, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the World Bank.
Given the huge and rapidly escalating challenges of climate change, though, it is now time to place environmental sustainability at the vital center of economic thinking and action. The global focus on promoting prosperity must become instead a total emphasis on generating and maintaining Climate Prosperity and Quality of Life. Nothing short of this approach will enable human, animal, and plant life to continue thriving in the 21st century and beyond. The work that Global Urban Development is doing with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in developing a three-year Climate Prosperity Project, starting with the meeting on The Economic Benefits of Climate Action held at Pocantico Hills, New York during November 26-28, 2007, is one early example of much more that needs to occur in terms of economic research and urban policy innovation.
Perhaps a sign of this new perspective is the international movement for “brownfields” restoration and redevelopment. The impetus for such public policy intervention came from urban mayors, who faced the problem of environmentally polluted, damaged, and even in some cases highly toxic, abandoned industrial land and buildings. The cost of cleaning up the damage is very high, and thus much of this property has been allowed to sit idle and unused, a clear economic loss. Through brownfields initiatives and programs, governments, working with the private sector, have been able to restore these elements of the urban environment back to productive use, such that they can be redeveloped not only for manufacturing but as offices, hotels, stores, and housing. The formerly toxic and derelict American Can Company factory in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood is now called “The Can Company”, a highly successful commercial and residential mixed-use development. And since the infrastructure and transportation services and urban population is already in place or nearby, cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields is far more conserving of land than abandoning such sites and building new facilities on “greenfield” land in the distant suburbs or exurbs. Clearly, brownfields restoration and redevelopment is one of the many building blocks of Climate Prosperity Strategy.
Similarly, the increasing interest in the use of historic preservation and renovation to encourage reinvestment in and regeneration of urban neighborhoods is an example of Climate Prosperity. Conserving older buildings actually generates rising economic values, new sustainable development, and the growth of jobs, incomes, and business opportunities. In the field of real estate development, land conservation has long been recognized as the best way to raise the value of both existing and new properties. Preserving and enhancing land for open space, parks, golf courses, lakes, wetlands, and many related recreational and environmental amenities (such as attractive view corridors) actually helps generate significant increases in property values and business profits. In other words, real estate developers earn more money by building on less land.
A good example of Climate Prosperity Strategy is metropolitan Portland, Oregon, which since the 1970s has transformed its economy from forest products to high-technology production, while containing the spread of suburbanization through an urban growth boundary, building a popular light-rail transit system, increasing urban densities and revitalizing neighborhoods, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels according to the Kyoto Protocols, and reducing vehicle miles traveled per capita by more than 10 percent, and most importantly, increasing jobs, raising incomes, expanding capital investment and higher density development, boosting property values, promoting transit-oriented, biking and hiking-friendly, walkable, sustainable, and livable communities, and generating both a more attractive quality of life and a more dynamic economic future. The recent CEOs for Cities report on Portland’s Green Dividend demonstrates that metropolitan Portlanders save $1.1 billion annually on reduced transportation expenses, and with an additional savings of $1.5 billion per year on reduced commuting and travel time. Local residents reinvest most of this savings as increased disposable income spent within the metropolitan economy, further multiplying their substantial economic benefits from enhanced environmental sustainability. In addition, by dramatically improving the region’s quality of life and sustainable lifestyle, metropolitan Portland has attracted and retained a highly talented and skilled workforce, which has fostered a great deal of increased business investment and entrepreneurial growth.
Chicago’s Climate Jobs Strategy is taking a comparable approach, with similar efforts in metropolitan Pittsburgh through the Green Building Alliance and the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, in the State of California through the “Green Wave” investment initiative in which the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the State Teachers’ Retirement System have invested nearly one half billion dollars in renewable energy and other environmental technology companies to create jobs and business opportunities within the state, and in many other communities, towns, cities, counties, metropolitan regions, and states across the country. Recently a statewide public policy organization, Next10, published the California Green Innovation Index to promote greater investment in environmentally sustainable “clean” technologies and products.
Finally, a greener, cleaner, more conserving of existing land and buildings, and more pedestrian-friendly urban environment greatly strengthens quality of life, which is essential for attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce. In the new economy of the 21st century, which is knowledge and information-based, technology and communication-intensive, and globally oriented, people are now the single most important economic asset in the world, more than geographic location, natural resources, or even financial capital. In order to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce, every urban area must have a good quality of life, including an attractive and sustainable physical and cultural environment. Thus for the first time since the Industrial Revolution began three centuries ago, economic growth is no longer the enemy of environmental protection. Increasingly, a good environment is essential for a good economy.
Global Urban Development has made this same argument for the past six years, at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development (“Earth Summit”) in Johannesburg, South Africa and in many other venues. The framework that we have been using is called “Metropolitan Economic Strategy” in which sustainability and quality of life are part of the overall mix. This framework, outlined by GUD in various documents such as our 2001 report to the United Nations on Productive Cities and Metropolitan Economic Strategy, our 2002 reports to the South African Cities Network and the US Agency for International Development, and our 2002 report for the National Governors Association entitled State Policy Approaches to Promote Metropolitan Economic Strategy, is increasingly becoming part of mainstream economic development and public policy discourse throughout the world, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the World Bank.
Given the huge and rapidly escalating challenges of climate change, though, it is now time to place environmental sustainability at the vital center of economic thinking and action. The global focus on promoting prosperity must become instead a total emphasis on generating and maintaining Climate Prosperity and Quality of Life. Nothing short of this approach will enable human, animal, and plant life to continue thriving in the 21st century and beyond. The work that Global Urban Development is doing with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in developing a three-year Climate Prosperity Project, starting with the meeting on The Economic Benefits of Climate Action held at Pocantico Hills, New York during November 26-28, 2007, is one early example of much more that needs to occur in terms of economic research and urban policy innovation.
Perhaps a sign of this new perspective is the international movement for “brownfields” restoration and redevelopment. The impetus for such public policy intervention came from urban mayors, who faced the problem of environmentally polluted, damaged, and even in some cases highly toxic, abandoned industrial land and buildings. The cost of cleaning up the damage is very high, and thus much of this property has been allowed to sit idle and unused, a clear economic loss. Through brownfields initiatives and programs, governments, working with the private sector, have been able to restore these elements of the urban environment back to productive use, such that they can be redeveloped not only for manufacturing but as offices, hotels, stores, and housing. The formerly toxic and derelict American Can Company factory in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood is now called “The Can Company”, a highly successful commercial and residential mixed-use development. And since the infrastructure and transportation services and urban population is already in place or nearby, cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields is far more conserving of land than abandoning such sites and building new facilities on “greenfield” land in the distant suburbs or exurbs. Clearly, brownfields restoration and redevelopment is one of the many building blocks of Climate Prosperity Strategy.
Similarly, the increasing interest in the use of historic preservation and renovation to encourage reinvestment in and regeneration of urban neighborhoods is an example of Climate Prosperity. Conserving older buildings actually generates rising economic values, new sustainable development, and the growth of jobs, incomes, and business opportunities. In the field of real estate development, land conservation has long been recognized as the best way to raise the value of both existing and new properties. Preserving and enhancing land for open space, parks, golf courses, lakes, wetlands, and many related recreational and environmental amenities (such as attractive view corridors) actually helps generate significant increases in property values and business profits. In other words, real estate developers earn more money by building on less land.
A good example of Climate Prosperity Strategy is metropolitan Portland, Oregon, which since the 1970s has transformed its economy from forest products to high-technology production, while containing the spread of suburbanization through an urban growth boundary, building a popular light-rail transit system, increasing urban densities and revitalizing neighborhoods, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels according to the Kyoto Protocols, and reducing vehicle miles traveled per capita by more than 10 percent, and most importantly, increasing jobs, raising incomes, expanding capital investment and higher density development, boosting property values, promoting transit-oriented, biking and hiking-friendly, walkable, sustainable, and livable communities, and generating both a more attractive quality of life and a more dynamic economic future. The recent CEOs for Cities report on Portland’s Green Dividend demonstrates that metropolitan Portlanders save $1.1 billion annually on reduced transportation expenses, and with an additional savings of $1.5 billion per year on reduced commuting and travel time. Local residents reinvest most of this savings as increased disposable income spent within the metropolitan economy, further multiplying their substantial economic benefits from enhanced environmental sustainability. In addition, by dramatically improving the region’s quality of life and sustainable lifestyle, metropolitan Portland has attracted and retained a highly talented and skilled workforce, which has fostered a great deal of increased business investment and entrepreneurial growth.
Chicago’s Climate Jobs Strategy is taking a comparable approach, with similar efforts in metropolitan Pittsburgh through the Green Building Alliance and the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority, in the State of California through the “Green Wave” investment initiative in which the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the State Teachers’ Retirement System have invested nearly one half billion dollars in renewable energy and other environmental technology companies to create jobs and business opportunities within the state, and in many other communities, towns, cities, counties, metropolitan regions, and states across the country. Recently a statewide public policy organization, Next10, published the California Green Innovation Index to promote greater investment in environmentally sustainable “clean” technologies and products.
Climate Prosperity and Quality of Life
To further these aims, Global Urban Development and the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund have launched the Climate Prosperity Project, beginning
with a meeting on The Economic Benefits of Climate Action held at
Pocantico Hills, NY during November 26-28, 2007. A brief quote from
the meeting’s invitation summarizes the principal intent:
“Policymakers worry that climate action may cost too much, hurt the economy, eliminate jobs, and become politically unpopular. Yet many of those who are currently working to reduce emissions inside companies and in governments find they are saving money and fostering economic opportunity and competitiveness. Real world experiences and lessons suggest that we now have win-win options for climate policy that can minimize economic harm and produce significant benefits by generating increased prosperity and improved quality of life.”
Climate Prosperity Project: 2008-2010
The key purpose of this initial phase of the Climate Prosperity Project is to shift public opinion in the US, such that “Climate Prosperity” becomes the key perspective on the necessity and opportunity of engaging in climate protection, meaning that it will produce significant economic benefits for individuals, families, communities, businesses, governments, and indeed each and every element of society. The principal focus is on adopting a three-part agenda: GREEN SAVINGS/GREEN JOBS/GREEN PROFITS. The clear and unequivocal message is that rather than climate action being costly and harmful to the economy, climate protection saves everyone money by spending less on energy through increased conservation and efficiency. In addition, saving money on energy not only helps consumers, but it helps businesses save energy costs, which enhances their profit margins and enables them to provide more jobs at higher wages and salaries, thus further boosting people’s incomes and promoting new investment and development. Finally, climate protection will generate significant new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities through increasing energy conversation and efficiency, expanding renewable energy production and distribution, and offering a wide range of new products, production processes, goods and services, and new technologies.
The Climate Prosperity Project has made substantial progress since the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) conference on “The Economic Benefits of Climate Action” held at Pocantico Hills, NY, during November 26-28, 2007, and particularly since Global Urban Development (GUD) and RBF launched the project during our Official Side Event held on March 6, 2008 at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC). We have now put together a highly diverse public-private partnership consisting of pro-business and pro-economic development organizations like the International Economic Development Council, American Chamber of Commerce Executives, Urban Land Institute, International Downtown Association, American Council on Renewable Energy, and Alliance for Regional Stewardship, along with state and local government associations including the National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, National League of Cities, and U.S. Conference of Mayors, together with environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Reconnecting America, Smart Growth Leadership Institute, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Surface Transportation Policy Project, Sierra Club, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Center for Neighborhood Technology, plus the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations, Living Cities and other community development organizations, faith-based groups, and numerous others, including potential corporate support from several major companies.
Our basic approach is to reach and involve millions of people to learn about and understand the new economic paradigm of the 21st century, in which the old industrial method of overusing and wasting all manner of natural resources is rapidly replaced with a system that conserves and reuses resources. We call this Climate Prosperity and Quality of Life, or “Resource-Saving Capitalism.” In this approach, an area or place gets richer by getting "greener", and people, places, families, communities, businesses, and governments all thrive better and earn more by using less. This is not a new idea, of course, having been well argued by people like William McDonough, Michael Braungart, Paul Hawken, Peter Senge, and Amory and Hunter Lovins, among many others. Cradle to Cradle, Natural Capitalism, Green to Gold, The Necessary Revolution, and many other business-oriented books and articles have made the case for "ecosystem services" and "the circular metabolism." Most of this literature and these conversations have thus far been confined solely to the senior executive leadership of the business community, applying these ideas to their company's supply chains and general resource productivity and efficiency. Even many of the people employed by these firms are not aware of such ideas and practices.
The central initiative is to create hundreds of state and local Climate Prosperity Partnerships to design and implement hundreds of Climate Prosperity Strategies, which are essentially economic development strategies in which sustainability is the centerpiece. This approach shares a common framework with the Apollo Alliance (for example, the recently published book, Apollo’s Fire, co-authored by Bracken Hendricks and U.S. Congressman Jay Inslee, summarizes this argument), the Blue-Green Alliance, and Green for All, among numerous other groups. By involving people in these state and local economic development efforts, it moves the debate on energy, climate, and environment from fear to opportunity, and appeals to absolutely everyone, not just to people who already care about the environment, which unfortunately are in the minority. All human beings on planet earth care deeply about their own livelihood and well-being, and the livelihood and well-being of their loved ones, including future generations.
Climate Prosperity Strategies are intended to include everyone actively in the conversation, so that they can learn that improving the environment is really the only viable way to ensure prosperity and quality of life in the future, as well as the only way to reduce global violence and warfare in competing to control and consume increasingly scarce and costly resources. State and local Climate Prosperity Strategies will help teach people to think inside this new economic/environmental/social paradigm, and to act accordingly, by making money, raising incomes, preserving and generating jobs, promoting green investment and development, through innovation, efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of natural resources, and not just fossil fuels and other energy sources, but all resources: land, water, food, air, people, and every other natural and human resource.
To reemphasize, our main message is GREEN SAVINGS/GREEN JOBS/GREEN PROFITS, across the entire economy among business, government, and households. Everyone saves by conserving energy and other resources and becoming more energy and resource efficient, and this savings strengthens the productivity and competitiveness of all jobs and profits, as well as generating specific new green business and employment opportunities.
Through our newly organized national public-private-civic-community partnership, we aim to foster hundreds of state and local partnerships and strategies in the next few years, similar to the successful approach that was used to design and implement President Clinton's National Homeownership Strategy during the 1990s, which produced the highest homeownership rate ever in America, and was one of the most successful affordable housing policy initiatives in the US during the past half-century. Several of our partner organizations are working with members of Congress to create two new competitive grant programs, one for capacity-building for Climate Prosperity Partnerships and the other for strategic planning for Climate Prosperity Strategies. In addition, we are working to organize a private sector investment fund that will provide working capital loans to green businesses and green development projects, providing that the area has first formed a Climate Prosperity Partnership and completed a Climate Prosperity Strategy.
Currently the Climate Prosperity Project is in the process of producing the first-ever Climate Prosperity Guidebook, to be published in late October by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and many other key economic development, business, government, and environmental organizations. This new publication will explain to local government officials, business and community leaders, and economic developers why they should be doing these things and help teach them how to do these things most effectively and creatively.
As we proceed on building the long-term strategy for 2009-10, this year we plan to initiate three to five pilot Climate Prosperity Strategies, to make it real for people, to show how it really works, to teach, to learn, to demonstrate actual results, to help shape public policy and business investment decisions, by strongly emphasizing green cost savings from conservation and efficiency, as well as green business and job opportunities in new dynamic and growing economic activities across the entire spectrum of production, consumption, distribution, and services.
Long-Term Strategy
The main purpose of Global Urban Development’s Climate Prosperity Project is literally to transform the world by creating a new economic paradigm in three stages leading up to the end of 2020. Clearly we will not be able to make all of the physical, economic, or political changes by these dates. The goal is to create new innovative ideas and practices for business, government, and civic institutions, communities, and the general public to begin thinking and acting differently in order to avert the climate crisis of the 21st century and rebuild a more sustainable Climate Prosperity and Quality of Life. This new Climate Prosperity will begin phasing out the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and drastically reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time that it actually creates millions of new jobs and raises incomes worldwide by conserving resources rather than constantly overusing and wasting them. In other words, Climate Prosperity will generate a healthier, more peaceful, and more equitable global society with a decent standard of living for every person and community, operating in harmony with the natural environment, rather than continuing to harm civilization through violence and excessive resource depletion.
Phase I by 2010: GREEN SAVINGS/GREEN JOBS/GREEN PROFITS. The central purpose of the first three-year phase of the Climate Prosperity Project is to shift public opinion in the US, such that “Climate Prosperity” becomes the main perspective on the necessity and opportunity of engaging in climate protection, meaning that it will produce significant economic benefits for individuals, families, communities, businesses, governments, and indeed each and every element of society. The principal focus is on adopting a three-part agenda: GREEN SAVINGS/GREEN JOBS/GREEN PROFITS. The clear and unequivocal message is that rather than climate action being costly and harmful to the economy, climate protection saves everyone money by spending less on energy through increased conservation and efficiency. In addition, saving money on energy not only helps consumers, but it helps businesses save energy costs, which enhances their profit margins and enables them to provide more jobs at higher wages and salaries, thus further boosting people’s incomes and promoting new investment and development. Finally, climate protection will generate significant new employment and entrepreneurial opportunities through increasing energy conversation and efficiency, expanding renewable energy production and distribution, and offering a wide range of new products, production processes, goods and services, and new technologies.
Phase II by 2015: GREEN SUPERSAVINGS/GREEN TECHNOLOGIES/LOW CARBON ECONOMY. This clearly will take longer, but given the current advanced advocacy by practical business and government leaders ranging from General Electric’s Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt to former US President Bill Clinton, this indeed seems a possible goal to reach within the next eight years, especially if we have a clear message and creative mass communications strategies.
Phase III by 2020: CLIMATE PROSPERITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE/RESOURCE-SAVING CAPITALISM. This is the ultimate goal. If we can achieve it in terms of economic, political, and cultural consciousness during the next 13 years, then we can actually make it happen in the real world by 2050, which will avert the dangerous threat of global warming that has been so alarmingly articulated by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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