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New Orleans Repair an Experiment in Green

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Aug 29, 2009 7:12 PM CDT
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(Newser) – Four years after Katrina, the rebuilding of New Orleans is becoming an exercise in environmentally friendly reconstruction, Bryan Walsh writes in Time. Global Green USA, the American arm of a group founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, is leading the pack by building a sustainable village in the city's Lower Ninth Ward, and retrofitting schools with solar panels and wetland habitats to make them more energy efficient.

The federal government is also pitching in, paying to "green up" city libraries and install highly efficient, solar-powered LED streetlights. But progress is slow so far, and, notes Walsh, may be ultimately pointless in a below-sea-level city like New Orleans, which remains vulnerable to hurricanes and rising sea levels. On the other hand, all US cities need to be greened up in time—and New Orleans could prove to be the perfect test case.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, top, talks with Matt Petersen, right, president of Global Green U.S.A. during a tour of a green-built house in the Holy Cross neighborhood in New Orleans.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, top, talks with Matt Petersen, right, president of Global Green U.S.A. during a tour of a green-built house in the Holy Cross neighborhood in New Orleans.   (AP Photo)
Brad Pitt walks to a news conference with Global Green USA in front of an environmentally friendly house under construction in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
Brad Pitt walks to a news conference with Global Green USA in front of an environmentally friendly house under construction in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.   (AP Photo)
Reconstruction continues apace behind the remnants of a home in he 9th Ward.
Reconstruction continues apace behind the remnants of a home in he 9th Ward.   (AP Photo)
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, center, talks with Matt Petersen, right, and an interpreter, in New Orleans, Friday, Oct. 5, 2007.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, center, talks with Matt Petersen, right, and an interpreter, in New Orleans, Friday, Oct. 5, 2007.   (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 5 comments
brawne
Aug 30, 2009 12:55 PM CDT
Gorbachev has to be happy he wasn't Yeltsin on the tanks. Gorbachev was the first Russian kept alive because this country fed Russia for years after WW11. That's why he was the first to not think we were devils. Also the reason that Reagan lengthened the fall of the wall rather than shortened it--popular misconception. He shit on Gorbachev like a big dog and let the Yeltsin garbage take over the country. History--always history. Also why a KGB nobody like Putin is what he is cause we had no plan for that just like we didn't have for Iraq. And I ain't blaming anybody, we had no plan for the south in 1865 either. We're doers; not planners. Might want to keep that in mind as every little thing we used to ignore has nuclear weapons. Which by the way no one would have if FDR hadn't got sucked up into Einstein's paranoia. Which weirdly brings you back to the Nazis. If Hitler hadn't made the Copenhagen School--all the the greatest physicists-- flee to all countries in the late 30's because they were Jewish, Einstein might not have feared that the few Christian and Jewish physicists who remained in Germany would invent an atomic bomb before us. That is the most forthright example you will ever get about how religion is detrimental. It wasn't science that split that atom--it was religion.
riffran
Aug 30, 2009 7:34 AM CDT
New energy?...care to elaborate..Magnetic, radient, electric,???? Just being nosy...I LOVE reading about new tech stuff..Supercapacitors actually fascinate me...IF they could develop that into a good enough storage medium and eliminate the "ole battery", you could potentialy store excess solar output, or wind energy...Hope the son does well
brawne
Aug 30, 2009 5:07 AM CDT
And this is the last time I'm gonna mention it but it does cause all the problems. I have a photographic memory. I remember everything I have read by page number and everything ever said to me by where. So I do jump many steps. And to remember the day of your second birthday--not so great. That is how I lost my younger son--that wicked hippocampus delivers emotions as well as memories. You have to learn to leave the feeling behind and take the fact. Well, that isn't easy either. But, it is interesting that my verbal memory is connected to place. Which again is a huge hippocampus thing. You couldn't lose me in the woods if you tried.
US • Science

 
Hurricane Katrina • New Orleans • green building • construction • reconstruction • housing industry • rebuilding • Global Green USA

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