Global Green News
It's 'Big Easy' Being Green
THE HARVARD CRIMSON. OCTOBER 16, 2009. By Raul A. Carillo
Green-collar pioneers are rebuilding New Orleans
Stuck in the middle of party-line polemics over President Obama’s brief visit yesterday, the people of New Orleans remain unmoved. One can imagine they’re not so much concerned with whether solutions come in red or blue so much as they are the amount of greenbacks: From federal outlays, state funds, or private investors, the money must come in.
Four years after America’s worst-ever natural disaster, recovery efforts in one of the country’s most beautiful cities could still use a financial stimulus. Perhaps just as importantly, New Orleans could also use significantly more federal attention. Sadly, although the project of rebuilding, replenishing, and remaking the Crescent City is an obligation laced with opportunity, yesterday was the first time President Obama has visited New Orleans since the campaign trail. Residents can’t help but feel a little jaded. According to Ryan A. Williams ’10, a Louisiana native and young entrepreneur, “The possibilities for innovation in New Orleans are endless. We just need people to care.”
Luckily, some people do care—and there are signs of optimism on the horizon. Through thick and thin, through hell and high water, New Orleans is quietly becoming the capital of a new “Green America.” Large sections of public infrastructure are being rebuilt to go green. In true American spirit, residents and investors are using the crisis to lay long-term plans for a more environmentally sound future. Insiders and outsiders are working together and asking the right questions: If homes need to be refurbished, why not make them solar? Why not hire construction workers unemployed due to the housing crisis to build new houses they might themselves enjoy? Gradually, with grist and guts, New Orleans is turning formerly unemployed blue-collar construction workers into green-collar heroes.
No organization is doing more to rebuild the Big Easy—and instill a calm sense of confidence in the community—than Global Green USA, the American arm of Mikhail Gorbachev’s international NGO Green Cross. With the help of Home Depot, Global Green USA is creating an entire sustainable village in the severely damaged Lower Ninth Ward. Perhaps even more importantly given the lack of state funds, they’re also refurbishing schools: At Gentilly Terrace Elementary School, which is getting an energy overhaul, power bills should fall some $22,000 a year. In a city struggling with the aftermath of disaster and the widespread effects of national recession, these kinds of energy-saving initiatives make an exponential difference.
