sustainability

Link to Los Angeles Times (Nov. 14 2025) | At the 2025 Future Green Leaders Summit, middle school students designed fire-resistant homes using AI, learned about jobs that support the climate and environment, and cheered on superheroes dressed as “Wind,” “Solar,” “Ethanol” and other energy sources as they squared off in a rap and dance […]

*If you are attending the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo next week, see below for Monday tour. Our Buildings Are Using Too Much Water In 2015, a 60-year-old cast iron water main burst in Lafayette, CA causing significant flooding and left residents without water. In 2018, a water main ruptured in Hayward, CA creating a […]

Innovative Challenge Seeks Scalable Solutions for Reimagining Residential Design through Innovative, Water-Efficient Living Spaces LOS ANGELES, CA (September 25, 2025)  Water is one of the world’s most precious and finite resources—critical to sustaining life, agriculture, and industry. Yet residential water consumption remains a significant contributor to global water stress. The U.S. Green Building Council California […]

Link to Trellis (Aug. 27, 2025) | The climate and sustainability fellowships landscape has shifted since I last shared a list of 18 opportunities three years ago. …Below are 16 programs that can help students and working professionals advance their sustainability careers. A handful don’t officially call themselves “fellowships,” but each program on this list offers a fellowship-like […]

The climate crisis isn’t arriving quietly. In 2024, the U.S. experienced 27 billion-dollar climate and weather disasters, just behind the record-setting 28 in 2023. Over the past three years, the annual average number of billion-dollar disasters has surged to 24.3, nearly triple the long-term average of 9 per year since 1980. Beyond reshaping how we […]

Link to PBS show via DavidNazarNews (July 14, 2025) | How to fireproof your home. This is what you can do to protect yourself and your house from a fire in the aftermath of the deadly January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena that burned thousands of homes to the ground. Residents […]

Link to Forbes.com (June 28, 2025) | The road to hell and housing shortages is paved with good intentions. In this case, those intentions came in the form of the California Environmental Quality Act, passed into law in 1970 to protect the state’s fragile eco systems from development. …On June 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation […]

The Benchmark for Green Contractor Leadership Positions itself for Major Growth across the Construction Industry LOS ANGELES, CA (June 30, 2025)  USGBC California announced today that it is assuming ownership and management of the Contractor’s Commitment to Sustainable Building Practices, the premier program for leaders in green commercial construction to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and […]

Link to Associated Press (June 24, 2025) | When Judy Sautner recently walked into Power Appliance, a store in a southeastern suburb of Cleveland, she had one goal in mind: replace her daughter’s broken dryer with something that worked and didn’t break the bank. …Jay Buchanan, the store’s owner, said many customers are like Sautner, […]

Link to Beverly Press / Park LaBrea News (June 4, 2025) | The U.S. Green Building Council California and BuildingEase on May 29 announced a groundbreaking partnership to create the Rebuild Marketplace – a centralized platform to connect communities, builders and homeowners with sustainable and fire-resilient building materials in the wake of California’s increasingly frequent and […]

Link to gb&d (June 6, 2025) | The USGBC California 24th Annual Green Building Conference came to San Francisco on May 22, 2025, drawing specifiers, green building specialists, and manufacturers from across the West Coast and as far away as the Netherlands to the Fort Mason Center on the city’s waterfront. …[T]he event served as […]

Link to Doctoring Up Design Podcast (June 2, 2025) | California’s escalating wildfire crisis is forcing a radical rethink in residential architecture. With fires growing in intensity, frequency, and unpredictability, architects, planners, and policymakers are coming together to define a new blueprint for resilient, sustainable living in the wildland-urban interface. In May, I journeyed to Design […]