Articles by Emily Gertz

A park for Ground Zero

Andy's post last week touched on the latest designs for the "Freedom Tower" at the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. I thought today I'd follow up from my perspective as a green-minded local. The terrible news of the bombings in London is an upsetting backdrop, but it reinforces my belief that we need to meet this kind of violence with positive visions for the future and the social and political will to realize them.

Right now, the process and designs for the new World Trade Center don't cut it.

The rebuilding effort long ago devolved into being more about the agendas of a few elites than what's best for the life and health (physical, economic, and emotional) of the city. It looks to the past -- the hokey insistence on a height of 1,776 feet, re-creation of office space the city almost definitely doesn't need (and would you want to work on the upper floors of a rebuilt WTC?), and the loss of clean energy generation on the site, even as the daily news is full of changing economics, peak oil, global warming, and war in the Middle East.

The "Freedom Tower" as originally designed by Daniel Liebeskind was an airy, glass-walled structure that combined transparency with scale, encapsulating the endurance and openness of America's democratic society. In succeeding iterations, the tower has become a military fortress, unconnected to life at a human scale in a civilian environment. I don't suppose I need to hammer home the symbolism of that. (It's also James Howard Kunstler's July 2005 Eyesore of the Month.) Check out this entry on Curbed (a New York real estate blog -- yes, we have real estate blogs here) to get an idea of how suffocating the "almost impermeable and impregnable 200-foot base" will be in real life.

Five developing nations a presence at the G8 summit

Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa -- some of the world's most dynamically growing developing nations and up-and-coming greenhouse gas emitters -- have been invited to attend this week's G8 summit as informal participants. I've been digging through the international press this morning, looking for perspectives on Gleneagles absent in much of the Western news media.

India's New Kerala reports (via the Indo-Asian News Service) that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in London today. Singh will ask the G8 nations to transfer green energy technologies to the developing nations, removing "non-tariff barriers," i.e. international protections for intellectual property rights to these technologies, as The Indian Express explains with a tad more clarity. Singh wants relaxed international IPR protections on clean energy technologies, to make them more affordable for the developing nations to use in place of dirty energy.

Below the fold, more G8 perspectives from the presses of China, Mexico, and South Africa.

Endangered Species Act: Still endangered

Let's unbury this story from its grave in the holiday weekend press.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported on a leaked draft of legislation that would effectively gut the Endangered Species Act. The proposed law was prepared by the Republican staff of the House Resources Committee, led by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), who's long opposed the ESA.

The Times' Felicity Barringer writes:

The draft legislation was given to The New York Times by a lawmaker opposed to its provisions, who requested anonymity because the legislation had not yet been introduced. It has been circulating among interest groups focused on the issue, which tends to pit environmental groups against a loose coalition of Western ranchers, farmers and business interests. Most lobbyists believe that the committee's legislation will provide the framework for rewriting and reauthorizing the act.

Coincidentally, The Christian Science Monitor ran an in-depth look at the ESA on June 28. Although the article doesn't include the jounalistic drama of "leaked draft legislation," it's a good overview of the politics swirling around the ESA, which are even more complicated than Western governors vs. Beltway green groups now that religious groups are take a stake in species conservation:

"You can expect to hear from many people of faith as they witness with passion and resolve about the importance of protecting endangered species," Dorothy Boorse told a recent congressional committee. Dr. Boorse teaches biology at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., and is an evangelical Christian active with the Noah Alliance, a coalition of religious groups that support species protections.

O’Conner announces she’ll be leaving

Pundits and press have been chewing over the possibility of a resignation on the Supreme Court this week, with most of the focus on ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist. But the script has changed: This morning, Justice Sandra Day O'Conner announced that she'll be leaving the Court before the beginning of its next term.

BushGreenwatch (disclaimer: I wrote for BGW last year) ran an overview of what a vacancy on the court could mean for environmental laws, and it won't surprise anyone to read the anxious prognosis. I'd say this forecasting is even more relevant with O'Conner's departure than Rehnquist's. Less doctrinaire than either her most liberal or conservative colleagues, she was often the swing vote on the Court from case to case. Replacing her may well mean a real shift in the Court's balance of power.