In New York City, there is an ever-evolving debate surrounding various green-painted stripes crisscrossing the city; otherwise known as bike lanes.  One of NYC’s many urban sustainability initiatives to build a “Greener, Greater New York,”  bike lanes are intended as a means to encourage alternative transportation and reduce vehicle use, with numerous benefits such as improved air quality, reduced noise pollution and reduced congestion.

However, the bike lanes haven’t been without challenges: claims of business being harmed (though areas where walking/cycling are given primacy can boost retail sales 10-25%), parking spaces lost, pedestrians claim of reckless cyclists, cyclists claim of inattentive pedestrians, and that the green-painted lanes are just plain ugly.  Discussion and argument and ways of addressing concerns has been thick: a New York Times Room for Debate discussion has various worthy suggestions, ranging from better enforcement to redefining the legal relationship between drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

However, prescriptive measures aside, there is a fundamental need for a change in mindset. To enable changes in physical infrastructure, we need to build cultural infrastructure.  The way we think, educate, behave and reward needs to support the transformational energy, environmental and infrastructure changes underway as we transition to a low carbon economy.  Rules, laws and physical landscape can help inform our thinking and behaviors, but social and cultural norms of human behavior are, arguably, the biggest challenges to a more sustainable future.  If we cannot change the cultural infrastructure, physical infrastructure changes will only go so far.  Such cultural challenges are being confronted across economies: electric vehicle manufacturers are tackling range anxiety, a product of a car-dependent culture; while consumer goods producers wrestle to rethink planned obsolescence and life-cycle impacts, a product of a disposable consumption-based economy.  These are issues rooted not just in physical, but cultural infrastructure.

This piece was featured on GreenBiz.

In 2008, the US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that the Arctic region contains “90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas."¹  For relative context, these natural gas estimates are more than six times US domestic reserve estimates.²  Put another way, one third of global undiscovered, potentially recoverable natural gas reserves lie in the Arctic.³

As Arctic ice coverage shrinks, industry is expanding exploration in this region, asserting that extraction and accident response technology is appropriate for this environment. Advances include production rigs that operate on the sea bed and reinforced tankers that break through ice.  As put by Geir Utskot, an Arctic executive for Schlumberger Oilfield Services, "Technology will not hold up Arctic resource development.”⁴ (See Shell’s video presenting their Arctic preparedness, though note their containment systems are conceptual designs, not existing technology.)⁵

However, exploring unchartered territory is arguably a situation that warrants caution, not haste, and requires more than technology to get it right.  Recent oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and Yellowstone National Park—supposedly mature operations—illustrate the importance of examining the presumed norms of industry operations, not just technology, in order to avoid undermining culture, reputation, perceived capabilities, and, potentially, license to operate.