Tim Sullivan is director of conservation initiatives and acting state director for The
Nature Conservancy in Colorado, based in Boulder. His academic background is
in wildlife conservation biology, and he has worked on international, national,
and state-level conservation policy initiatives for the past twenty-five years.

“In the ponderosa pine forests of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain
West, the conservation imperative is to improve the condition of the forests,
to sustain biodiversity, and to build resilience to increased likelihood
of uncharacteristic, catastrophic wildfires. Ponderosa pine forests are the
most rich in biodiversity of Colorado’s major forest systems. Because they
occur at lower elevations and mainly along the Front Range, they are also
the most heavily populated by humans. Ponderosa pine forests, particularly
in lower elevations of the Rocky Mountains, developed in the presence of
fire. Low-intensity, frequent fires killed younger trees and helped maintain
an open canopy and a rich understory of grasses and forbs. The past century,
with a combination of intensive logging, followed by grazing, followed
by decades of fire suppression, has left much of the ponderosa pine forests
densely stocked with trees. These forests are much more susceptible to
intense crown fires that can kill all trees and damage forest soils to the point
that recovery can take decades, even centuries. The risk to both the biodiversity
of these forests and the people who live in them from catastrophic
wildfires is greatly elevated from our past lack of stewardship.

With climate change, the risk to these forests and human communities
is even greater. With just the trend in warmer and mostly drier conditions
in forests across the western United States documented in the past two
decades, the frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires has already increased
significantly. In Colorado, the Hayman fire erupted in the unusually hot,
dry summer of 2002, and caused nearly $40 million in damage, burned
133 homes, and forced the evacuation of 5,340 persons. Because conditions
were so dry and the forest so dense, more than 138,000 acres of ponderosa
pine forest were completely lost. Unlike with the fires these forests evolved
with, recovery from the Hayman fire will take centuries. The combination
of unhealthy forest conditions and the kind of climate conditions we face in
the coming years has already taken a toll on Colorado’s Front Range forests
that will be felt for many generations. How many more fires like Hayman
can Colorado endure?”

Jocelyn Hittle is the director of planning solutions for PlaceMatters, a nonprofit
organization that promotes environmental, economic, and social sustainability
in decision-making processes. She focuses on holistic planning processes,
including linking land-use planning to ecosystem science. Until recently, she
also was the editor of Planning & Technology Today, the publication of the American
Planning Association Technology Division. She is a graduate of Princeton
University and Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Ken Snyder is president and chief executive officer of PlaceMatters. He is a nationally
recognized expert on a broad range of technical and nontechnical tools for
community design and decision making. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and
Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Several studies have determined that residents of more compact, diverse
areas drive between 25 and 30 percent less than those in more sprawling
areas. For example, residents in King County, Washington, who live in more
walkable neighborhoods drive 26 percent fewer miles per day.  A meta-analysis
of many of these types of studies shows that people living in places
with twice the average density, diversity of uses, accessible destinations, and
interconnected streets drive about 30 percent fewer miles, even when socioeconomic
status and other factors are taken into account.  This reduction
in VMT [Vehicles Miles Traveled] suggests that emissions reductions of 7 to 10 percent from current levels could be achieved by 2050 through land-use changes alone.  By shifting
60 percent of new growth into more compact development patterns, estimates
indicate that up to 79 million metric tons of carbon dioxide could be
saved each year by 2030. This savings is equal to a 28 percent increase in
federal fuel-efficiency standards and one-half of the cumulative savings of the
new thirty-five miles per gallon corporate average fuel economy standards.
Areas that feature the right combination… include many
existing older neighborhoods, as well as newer mixed-use developments,
transit-oriented development, or traditional neighborhood development.
Increasingly, these types of development are given priority by municipalities
because of high livability and corresponding benefits such as public health
and reduction in obesity, and the developments’ improved ability to fund
regional amenities such as parks and transit.

…In a fortunate confluence of the private market and public benefit, communities
that offer choices in terms of housing, those that offer mixed-use
living, and those with shorter commute times to employment are ever more
appealing to consumers. Studies conducted by real estate researchers and
universities have found that about one-third of all homebuyers prefer “smart
growth–style” communities. For the first time, prices of attached units are
higher than detached single-family dwellings. The Brookings Institution
also has discovered that because demand outstrips supply, the price premiums
on homes in mixed-use developments are 40 to 100 percent.

If two-thirds of the 2050-built environment has yet to be built, and if people
are eager to buy or rent the type of homes, offices, and industrial properties
that help reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions, we face a tremendous
opportunity to design this new growth with climate change in mind.

In 2004, it was possible to count the number of major cities with staffed
and funded sustainability initiatives at the executive level on two hands. By
2006, the number of funded programs had grown to include dozens of cities
nationally. And by 2007, the trend had reached a fever pitch, with over 500
mayors signed on to the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, committing
to the spirit if not the letter of the Kyoto accords—a document that only
a few short years earlier was not seen as safe political material by many. That
number exceeded 900 in 2009.

What changed? How did cities, which lie at the bottom of the federal/
state/local regulatory chain, come to lead a national trend in green government?
And looking back, what has the green-city movement accomplished?
Is this a genuine change of direction or just a passing trend? What makes a
green-city program successful?

My Experience in Denver
My experience with these questions is firsthand. As a special assistant to
Denver mayor John Hickenlooper from 2003 to 2004, I helped the mayor
develop policy positions on issues related to parks, planning, public works,
and water. In late 2004 and 2005, inspired by a conversation with Portland’s
sustainability chief Susan Anderson, I worked with Mayor Hickenlooper and
Chief of Staff Michael Bennet to design and develop the mayor’s Greenprint
Denver program. I begged, borrowed, and stole ideas from a close group of
peers in other cities across the country, all developing fledgling programs
at a time when there was a collective sense of great new potential, as well
as fierce competition driven by new national-city rankings by groups like
SustainLane and The Green Guide. From 2005 to 2007, I built Greenprint
Denver into a citywide program and worked with city staff, scientists, and a
high-level community advisory group to develop a climate action plan that
aims to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent of 2005
levels by the year 2020.

Greenprint Denver is now among the largest initiatives in the mayor’s
office, with a permanent and borrowed staff of nine city employees and a
combined annual budget of millions (in grants of state and federal dollars
primarily). Solar America City grants, as well as stimulus funds, including
new Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) created by
the Barack Obama administration, have helped fuel a new generation of
related programs at the city level at a time when they are badly needed.

Jackson Perrin is a science educator who enjoys the challenges of living sustainably. He lives with his wife and daughter in their straw-bale house powered by
the sun and watered by the rain in Paonia, Colorado.
Dev Carey is a one-man educational think tank who has taught at all levels, from tots to graduate students, in subjects ranging from hitchhiking to botany. More of his writings and projects can be found at www.highdesertcenter.org.

Sustainable living can seem straightforward: buy a hybrid. Install some solar
panels. Shop locally. Travel less. And don’t forget the organic cotton sheets.
All those actions are worthy, but, of course, they’re just the beginning. How
do you live green without busting your personal budget? How do you design
a career that’s rewarding, but still allows you the time to live your values by,
say, biking to work? How do you find—and live responsibly within—a community
that helps, rather than hinders, your efforts to live more lightly? We
wanted to get our students thinking about these questions; we wanted their
quest for answers to be our next big adventure.
We had some experience with living lightly. When we first moved to
the small town of Paonia, Colorado, to teach at an independent community
school, we were in our late twenties—a couple of idealistic bachelors. Our
tiny paychecks inspired us to make a game out of living on less than $150 a
month. We biked everywhere, year-round; traded work on a local elk ranch
for our rent; picked apples; and socialized at potlucks instead of restaurants.
After a few years, we teamed up with three families to buy a piece of land
and built a six-sided house out of scavenged materials for less than $900.
(It’s still in use today.)
People often assumed we were either miserably uncomfortable or supported
by a family trust fund, but the truth was neither: we were supporting
ourselves and having a great time doing it. In fact, our lives were a lot like
one of our wilderness trips. We helped each other take risks, learned from
one another, and enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching our goals together.
With those experiences in mind, we founded the High Desert Center
for Sustainable Studies on our land in 2005.