Building a Better World Project

Through the Building a Better World Project, CLEAN offers education and information that can bring a perspective of hope and ability for action with solutions to environmental problems available today. The project also offers ideas for living more sustainably in an area that is in dire need of protection and care.

Presentations for the community, based on the series, will be given by speakers that include scientists, activists and other professionals from CLEAN’s executive board and board of advisers, as well as expert’s interviewed for the series.

Even small changes in lifestyle can begin to make a big difference in the environment. As people become more informed about the severity of environmental problems and impact on their health, they will be motivated to make changes for a healthier more sustainable environment.

Special Series

Houston as a Model City: Meeting the challenges of an environmental crisis

Building for the Future
October 2006· Building a home the conventional way creates an amazing amount of waste and a toxic environment for the people who live there. Most homes in Houston are built with no regard for ecological habitat, water and energy consumption, or preservation of open spaces. Building better for the future requires consciousness that goes beyond resale value and color schemes. It involves considering the resources and materials it takes to make a healthy, pleasant living space that is in harmony with nature.

Toxic emissions from refineries and chemical plants
September 2006· One of the most urgent challenges for the Houston area is the life-threatening toxic emissions from refineries and chemical plants. Harris County continues to be ranked as one of the top ten worst, dirtiest counties in the United States according to emissions reported in the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2002 Toxic Release Inventory and listed on scorecard.

Transportation choices key in becoming a model city
August 2006·By 2035, the Houston-Galveston area is expected to have a population of nearly 9,000,000, or 3,358,000 more people. The historic response to growth has been to build more roads and more suburbs. If this trend continues, the area will have more cars, more pollution, more travel time and less green space. People living in the suburbs already complain that all the building around them is taking away their view as well as the peace and quiet they moved away from the city to find. They also are spending more time alone driving in their cars.

Energy Outlook
July 2006·The outlook, at first glance, seems bleak. Oil and gas production has peaked in Texas, and global warming is now impacting weather patterns. Many people are recent victims of natural disasters including extreme heat, hurricanes, floods and droughts. Dallas and Houston are suffering from a record number of high ozone days, and other air pollution related to the burning of fossil fuels. TXU Corp. and other companies have proposed building or expanding at least coal-fired power plants.

Storms and flooding: Houston’s natural hazards
June 2006· A little more than 40 feet above sea level and about 40 miles from the gulf coast, Houston is naturally prone to flooding and vulnerable to hurricanes. But development of the area, without plans to preserve nature’s flood control resources, is making it worse. Development on the gulf coast continues to grow, increasing flood problems and adding to the number of people who need to be evacuated during a hurricane.

Houston as a Model City: Greenspace
May 2006· Over the coming years, with the demands of population growth, Houston stands to lose what’s left of its beautiful, precious ecosystem. Forecasts show Houston will have 3,538,000 more people by 2035, and the region is expected to grow to nine million people by 2036, according to Tomorrow: Houston 2035, a publication just released by the Gulf Coast Institute. If development and transportation trends and policies continue, most of the remaining greenspace will be covered with roads and buildings by 2035. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and surveys show that the people living in Houston today don’t want it that way.

Houston as a Model City: The Future of Water
April 2006· Today the City of Houston has plenty of water and has won awards for its water quality accomplished through water treatment plants, according to city officials. Jeff Taylor, Houston’s Public Works director, says the emphasis is on water quality rather than water supply in Houston because the city receives about 50 inches of rainfall a year and has a 30 to 50 year supply. However, Jim Adams, general manager of the San Jacinto Water Authority and chair of Region H Water Planning Group (Region H includes Houston), says by 2060, Houston will require three billion gallons of water a year. “We are going to have to reuse water and we are going to have to conserve,” says Adams. “Water is not as plentiful as it use to be.”

Houston as a Model City: Global Warming, Impacting today's urgent issues
March 2006· Global warming health issues related to living in a car-based city are the most urgent issues facing the community today, according to experts working to solve health and environmental problems in Houston and internationally. These issues severely impact quality of life and safety and can be solved by citizens taking action now.

Houston as a Model City: Meeting the challenges of an environmental crisis-- Improving the air comes first
February 2006·The price for the oil boom of years past is being paid for today in an environmental mess that some say will soon be a crisis. Air, water and soil of this region are horribly polluted, and illnesses and deaths linked to the pollution are increasing in the Houston area. This article features interviews with Houston's top officials who comment on how they are miving Houston forward as a model city.

Building a Better World

Nature As Medicine
July 2007· “Conventional science, medicine and industry have separated us from nature, made us fearful of it and encouraged us to try to control it in ways that have failed disastrously,” says Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves. But the natural world is filled with an intelligence and all the things we need to heal the planet and heal our-selves. You can find immune system boosters in your own back yard. Mushrooms can clean up oil spills. And there are plants that actually like to clean the waste out of waste water.

Global Warming: a sea change in public opinion
April 2007· In the past few months there has been a sea change in public opinion and rhetoric regarding global warming. The few who doubt global warming is caused by human activity have faded into the background as top news stories report evidence that global warming is real and business publications tell energy companies they better watch their carbon emissions.

Teach Your Children Well
February 2007· Studies show children spend 90 percent of their time indoors, going outdoors mostly just to get from their house to the car or from one building to another. Some schools and teachers are working to change this trend by using experiences in nature as laboratories for learning.

Youth in Action
November 2006· Young people all over the world are concerned about the loss of thousands of species, global warming, toxic pollution and other environmental issues, and they are taking action to make a difference. Their stories are inspiring and bring hope to a world that is in an environmental crisis.

Better Safe than Sorry: Using the Precautionary Principle to Prevent Harm
May 2006·Concerned about the increase in disease, declining natural resources and the rate at which some species are becoming extinct, a group of environmentalists, farmers, industry leaders and health care professionals explored solutions. In 1998, they gathered at Wingspread conference in Racine, Wisconsin and developed the precautionary principle as a guide toward preventing harm to the planet and to human health.

Biomimicry: natural solutions hidden in plain sight
February 2005·Biomimicry offers solutions hidden in plain sight for many of the modern world’s environmental problems.This new science studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems. It is a new way of viewing and valuing nature based on what we can learn from it rather than what we can extract from it.

What we can do today
June 2006· Modern living on this planet is testing nature. “We are disrupting a lot of ecology,” says Carl Hacker, PhD, ecologist and attorney on the faculty of the School of Public Health at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston (UTHSC). “In a good ecosystem, somebody is eating someone else. We are producing things at a greater rate than nature can absorb,” he adds. No organism has evolved to eat up the carbon dioxide produced when fossil fuels are burned at the rate they are used today.

Locally grown food: good for you, good for the planet
April 2005· Houston may be one of the best cities in the United States for the availability of locally grown food. This area has one of the most extensive community garden programs in the country. An abundance of local food also can be found at farmers’ markets and food co-ops. Eating local food can benefit the planet, the local economy and your health.

A house that pleases home buyers, builders and environmentalists
March 2005· This summer, construction will begin on a unique environmental housing project developed by CLEAN (Citizens League for Environmental Action Now) and Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The project brings together the scientific resources of FAS, Roger Rasbach’s beautiful environmentally-friendly home designs and innovative Houston builders to build a home that is affordable, energy efficient, durable and safe.

Permaculture: Designing a better world
February 2005· To build a better world, a better design is needed. Permaculture offers the philosophy, tools and systems for building a better world by observing good health in nature and designing systems around what nature does to create a lush thicket, a clean pond teaming with life, or the diversity of a self-sustaining prairie. The designs and systems of healthy ecosystems are studied and can be applied to daily life as well as to landscapes, gardens and farms.

Conserve and Recycle for a Cleaner, Sustainable Planet
August 2005· What would U.S. streets and neighborhoods look like if there were no system for neatly disposing of waste? While garbage is kept out of sight, landfills grow and multiple like a cancer across the country, natural resources arewasted and cities spend billions of dollars on dealing with trash. Texans’ garbage alone can fill the old Astrodome in less than a month – 28 million tons of solid waste annually – at a cost of more than $1 billion for disposal.

Healthy places for children to live, learn and play
September 2005· One of the most important things adults can do to keep children healthy is to provide healthy places for them to live, learn and play. Human beings spend 90 percent of their time indoors, yet indoor air quality of homes and schools is typically worse than outdoor air quality even in large polluted cities like Houston. Environmental hazards for children exist outdoors, too.

Doing well by doing good: social and environmental responsibility can be profitable
October 2005· What do a food retailer, a sports clothing company and a carpet manufacturer have in common? They are all very successful companies demonstrating that caring for people and the planet is good business.

Detoxing Your Life
November 2005· Evidence for the connection between exposure to environmental toxins and health is growing. Breast cancer, asthma, heart disease, respiratory diseases, even neurological and reproductive development all have been linked to living in a toxic world. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) studied nine people, who do not work with chemicals, to find out just what kind of toxic burden people are carrying and found that the load is heavy. This group’s total body burden was 167 synthetic chemicals. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development.

Making a World of Difference: Connecting the Dots
December 2005· In 2005 CLEAN focused on exploring ways to build a safer, healthier, more sustainable world. In a series of monthly articles we covered topics ranging from biomimicry to detoxing your life. During our research we talked with talented, dedicated people who demonstrated we can make a world of difference by paying close attention to the natural world around us, the health of people around us and our own health. Taking care to do no harm to the planet or ourselves and noticing early warning signs can lead to better, more creative ways of producing the things we need.

The Surge Toward Nuclear Power for Clean Energy: Threat or Promise?
May 2007· With the threat of global warming and fossil fuel supplies running low, nuclear power is being considered as an option to meet future energy needs. Tony Blair just announced a blueprint for building five new nuclear plants in Great Britain. Along with many in the U.S. House and Senate, President Bush is advocating nuclear power as a solution to global warming.