Some hope that record margins (known as "crack spread," heh heh) will lead refineries to crank up gas production, but in any case, there’s dangerously little slack in America’s dangerously-tight gasoline supply chain. Blogger Robert Rapier points out that gasoline supplies right now are lower than they’ve ever been (at least since current records began, in 1991), besides a few Labor Day weekends when supplies are drawn down after all that summer driving.

I never quite understood the concept of a "summer driving season," anyways. Why waste a glorious summer day cooped up inside a car stuck in traffic? This summer, let’s all escape gloomy gas prices and have a Summer Walking Season instead.

The vast trade show floor (over 700 exhibitors) testifies to the big business of green building. The show places leviathan bridge-builders next door to some guy selling composting toilets. An entire aisle is lined with suppliers of modular green roofs.

What I find interesting, though, is less the breadth of exhibitors than the depth.

Carpet companies rule the roost, commanding expansive multimedia pavilions right by the front door. Office furniture manufacturers have scattered $1,000, 100% recycled-content task chairs around the building. A few software companies catering to architects’ workflows speak to the lack of progress toward the paperless office. The Vinyl Institute has a stand, which amazingly has not yet been ransacked. And alone among all the world’s nations, the government of Canada has rented out good chunks of floor space to hawk Canadian wares.

These industries hardly have such outsized presence because they’re the construction industry’s biggest contributors to waste and environmental degradation. Hardly: by that measure, surely heating/cooling systems manufacturers (the biggest energy users in buildings) and cement makers (among the most carbon intensive industries in the world) should have their names on the lanyards encircling attendees’ necks.

Rather, the industries talking loudest about their sustainability are those in which certain companies (like Interface for carpeting and Herman Miller for office furniture) have staked their claim to fame on sustainability. Interface chairman Ray Anderson’s famed 1994 epiphany led to his company’s groundbreaking pledge to literally “leave no trace” — eliminate its ecological footprint. A few years later, other major carpet manufacturers were stumbling over one another at GreenBuild, in the pages of Metropolis magazine, and elsewhere, to out-do one another’s eco credentials.

Tellingly, Interface’s business is principally in “contract” work (i.e., for commercial buildings). Since home carpet manufacturers haven’t had to compete against Interface, ecological claims hardly merit a mention in their marketing. In fact, Interface’s own marketing for its recent entry into the home market (FLOR tiles) makes only passing reference to its considerable ecological merits.

Interestingly, many products and services tailored to the specific structure of USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system also show up on the trade floor. LEED-NC 2.2, the newest version of LEED for new buildings, gives credits for buildings that incorporate daylighting, treat their own wastewater, use certified-sustainable wood, and use recycled materials. Accordingly, vendors hawk skylights, water filtration systems, FSC-certified plywood, and recycled steel beams.

Other ways to reduce a building’s environmental impact aren’t specifically mentioned in LEED — say, composting facilities, or vegetable gardens, or habitats for endangered species on-site, or contributing to off-site transportation improvements — and therefore don’t find a ready market at GreenBuild. (To its credit, LEED allows a few “innovation credit” points, which the above examples could potentially be filed under.)

(I’d love to share my results, especially since this week’s theme is transportation, but it’s not yet working for me. Anyone else?)

So far, he’s posted eight building profiles, including two single-family houses (both in my neighborhood — must be my aura), high-rise offices, and the rehab of a YMCA into subsidized housing. For each, he notes the level of green-ness, unusual green techniques used, and perhaps a little back story about quirky geothermal wells or an underappreciated project manager who pushed the green angle.

The eight stories and related multimedia (photos from Iraq, Louisiana, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and a 12-part video documentary) neatly tie together the disparate lives on both ends of the petroleum pipe: an angry gang recruit in Itak Abasi, Nigeria, an oilfield manager in Basra living under what amounts to solitary confinement, fiercely Chavista village elders in Venezuela, the gas station manager who spends a third of her pay on gas, and a “concerned” Hummer-driving realtor in St. Charles, Illinois. The Tribune calls our “globe-spanning energy network” “so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever” — a bit out of character for a Republican newspaper with a suburban circulation base.

Xtracycle also gives you a chance to fulfill your dreams: one lucky winner in its “What I Would do on My Car-free Vacation” Contest will receive two cargo bike kits. And yes, you can get really far away on a bike: Xtracycle-equipped mountain bikes were used for the trans-Siberia segment of last year’s Expedition 360 human-powered circumnavigation.

41 percent say global warming is a very serious problem, 33 percent see it as somewhat serious, and roughly a quarter (24 percent) think it is either not too serious or not a problem at all.

That puts global warming 19th among 20 issues ranked. However, a very strong partisan pattern emerges here: although it’s dead last among Republicans, it ranks 14th for both Democrats and independents, above such “hot button” issues as government surveillance, flag burning, abortion, the inheritance tax, and gay marriage, and about the same as the budget deficit and immigration.However, there’s still hope: the better informed people are about global warming, the more likely they are to take it seriously. (Perhaps that’s tautological, but I sure hope not.)

But across party lines, those who say human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels has driven global warming rate the issue as far more serious. Fully 71 percent of Democrats who say human activity has caused temperatures to rise rate it as a very serious problem, along with 54 percent of Republicans who hold the same belief … [Overall], fully two-thirds of those who say human activity has made the earth hotter rate it as a very serious problem, compared with just 31 percent who see the earth warming but attribute it to natural patterns in the earth’s environment.

What’s more, those “on our side” believe that we can do something about it:

Fully 80 percent of those who attribute climate change to human activity say the effects can be reduced, compared with just 48 percent of those who say rising temperatures are a natural pattern in the earth’s environment.

The public also strongly disapproves of how Bush is handling global warming, giving him a 26 percent approval rating on the subject — below his 32-33 percent approval rating on immigration, the economy, and the environment as a whole. In fact, the 26 percent approval rating neatly matches his approval rating on energy policy (which could easily be tied to global warming) and the 30 percent of Americans who either don’t believe in global warming or don’t know about it.

So, a certain slice of Americans knows about and cares about global warming. The key is to expand that slice to at least an electoral majority, if not to (nearly) everyone.

Airlines predictably condemned the maneuver, calling on the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization to issue a proposal that would apply globally.

According to Crain’s Chicago Business, ICAO favors a trading system that would allow airlines to buy carbon credits from other industries, something the European Parliament proposal would not allow. Analysts in the UK report that ticket prices could go up a mere $3 if airlines could buy credits from other industries, but up to $35 if buying from other airlines.

Although new, lighter aircraft promise 20% increases in fuel efficiency, there is little that airlines can do to dramatically cut carbon emissions. This suits Caroline Lucas, a Green Party representative from the UK and author of the proposal, just fine: “the [legislation's] implication for the aviation industry as a whole would be to slow its growth.”

Under the arcane rules of Brussels, the parliament’s vote is merely advisory; the European Commission and member states ultimately would draft and enact any legislation.

According to the World Resources Institute, the EU accounts for 20.3% of global carbon emissions from aviation, compared with 39.6% for North America. Overall, aviation accounts for 2% of global emissions, but is growing faster than any other sector.

Contrary to popular belief, most developers don’t bulldoze Bambi solely to satisfy their innate avarice. Instead, they pave the Earth at the bidding of their clients — by which I mean lenders and investors, not homebuyers, office tenants, or other such "end users." Regardless of how exciting and cool a development proposal is, it just won’t happen if some faceless banker doesn’t advance a big pile of cash.

As rapacious national banks swallow smaller, local competitors by the dozen, these lending decisions have increasingly fallen to bankers blindly applying generic guidelines. The result: a paint-by-numbers landscape of interchangeable (but financially safe) subdivisions, strip malls, and office parks. Any developer who dared to innovate would have to do so on his own dime — and sure enough, many pioneering examples of New Urbanism have been backed by "nontraditional" investors like old-money families, large corporations (like Microsoft, Disney, EDS, and Ebsco), and even charitable foundations. Despite growing interest in socially responsible investing, few investors have thought of how to clean up the picture in the building industry — source of, say some, half of America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, Philip Langdon of New Urban News reports on a new generation of private-equity investment funds that have started up to match socially responsible real estate investors and leading-edge developers. Green developer extraordinaire Jonathan Rose of New York sees his new $100 million fund as an investor alternative to "buying stocks in REITs [Real Estate Investment Trusts, publicly traded corporations whose primary business is real estate] which are based on sprawl." Perhaps the most promising is the $100 million Green Living Fund, based in Santa Cruz and launched by Kacey Fitzpatrick:

Fitzpatrick, cofounder and vice president of sustainability at the Green Living Fund, said her pool is the result of a desire "to promote the right kind of development." She observes: "Our goal is to promote the creation of vibrant, pedestrian-oriented, walkable communities with a mix of uses and a mix of housing types and incomes. Transit is a key piece of what we are doing." The fund will use "the LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] standards for Neighborhood Development as the criteria for our initial assessment of a location," she says. Buildings will have to qualify for at least a LEED-Silver designation.

Whereas Rose hopes to raise funds from private and nonprofit investors, Fitzpatrick (an architect by training who hopes to make a bigger impact) hopes to gain substantial funding from public pension funds. If these funds successfully quantify the financial benefits of investing in green development, they could attract more investment, thereby mainstreaming now-unconventional forms of development.

I often liken the process of changing the way America builds cities to turning around a giant ship; many will be frustrated with the slow pace, but taking a trillion-dollar industry optimized to efficiently turn forests and fields into sprawl at the rate of five acres a minute means a lot of change. If investors — the ones paying for the bulldozers — catch on, we can count on those bulldozers being used far more gently in the future.

Hearteningly for this Second City resident, Keith Schneider’s banner headline — To Revitalize a City, Try Spreading Some Mulch — spotlights Mayor Richard M. Daley’s efforts to improve the city’s quality of life through greening initiatives. While many local wags have ridiculed the Daley as a mere gardener, the article calls new street trees and spiffy parks an “economic development strategy” central to the city’s general economic resurgence:

[M]ulch is an organic metaphor, tying together the various pieces of Chicago’s novel development strategy, praised by the Sierra Club and the Chamber of Commerce alike. By wrapping its arms and famous big shoulders around its Latin motto — Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden) — Chicago has become a global model for how a metropolis can pursue environmental goals to achieve economic success.

Having moved here shortly after the 1996 Democratic National Committee convention that landscape entrepreneur Christy Webber says Daley’s greening strategy dates back to, I can’t really speak to how big of a sea change these policies have proven. And as much as the article over-sells Chicago’s strengths (e.g., tying population growth caused by Latino immigration to downtown flowerbeds, ignoring the transit improvements that were canceled to pay down park bonds), it’s always nice to have our humble Midwestern achievements noticed east of the Hudson River.

Speaking of the Hudson, Robin Pogrebin reports on efforts by New York’s Battery Park City Authority to complete its decades-long, 92-acre waterfront development to exacting environmental standards. One new apartment tower will even use heat+power cogeneration — a remarkable step forward in efficient, distributed energy generation:

The Verdesian runs on a natural-gas microturbine that creates electricity, which helps power the building. The heat given off in this process is used to create the hot water. Mr. Albanese said this amounted to overall efficiency of 80 to 85 percent for the building. A typical power plant — which burns fossil fuels like oil, gas or coal — is about 30 percent efficient.

The story’s accompanying video shows Pogrebin drinking from the in-house sewage treatment plant in the Solaire, a LEED-NC Gold rated apartment tower that opened in 2003.

Other articles in the package report on large corporations voluntarily profiting from the green bandwagon, sometimes with help from enviro critics; emissions trading in the U.S. and Europe; a sort-of UL Labs for foodservice equipment efficiency (one restauranteur reports a one-week payback time for new dishwashing faucet nozzles); potential downsides to new technological fixes; eco-advertising and counteracting greenwashing with certification; organic pork; wind energy; reducing and recycling toxic e-waste; and greening government purchasing.