water diet gq magazine

if you're here today -- and i'm very happy that you are -- you've all heard abouthow sustainable development will save us from ourselves. however, when we're not at ted,we are often told

water diet gq magazine, that a real sustainability policy agendais just not feasible, especially in large urban areaslike new york city. and that's because most peoplewith decision-making powers, in both the public and the private sector,

really don't feelas though they're in danger. the reason why i'm here today,in part, is because of a dog -- an abandoned puppy i foundback in the rain, back in 1998. she turned out to bea much bigger dog than i'd anticipated. when she came into my life, we werefighting against a huge waste facility planned for the east river waterfront despite the fact thatour small part of new york city already handled more than 40 percentof the entire city's commercial waste: a sewage treatment pelletizing plant,a sewage sludge plant, four power plants,

the world's largestfood-distribution center, as well as other industries that bringmore than 60,000 diesel truck trips to the area each week. the area also has one of the lowest ratiosof parks to people in the city. so when i was contactedby the parks department about a $10,000 seed-grant initiativeto help develop waterfront projects, i thought they were reallywell-meaning, but a bit naive. i'd lived in this area all my life,and you could not get to the river, because of all the lovely facilitiesthat i mentioned earlier.

then, while joggingwith my dog one morning, she pulled me into what i thoughtwas just another illegal dump. there were weeds and piles of garbageand other stuff that i won't mention here, but she kept dragging me, and lo and behold, at the endof that lot was the river. i knew that this forgottenlittle street-end, abandoned like the dog that broughtme there, was worth saving. and i knew it would growto become the proud beginnings of the community-led revitalizationof the new south bronx.

and just like my new dog, it was an ideathat got bigger than i'd imagined. we garnered much support along the way, and the hunts point riverside parkbecame the first waterfront park that the south bronx had hadin more than 60 years. we leveraged that $10,000 seed grantmore than 300 times, into a $3 million park. and in the fall, i'm going to exchangemarriage vows with my beloved. (audience whistles) thank you very much.

(applause) that's him pressing my buttonsback there, which he does all the time. (laughter) but those of us livingin environmental justice communities are the canary in the coal mine. we feel the problems right now,and have for some time. environmental justice, for those of youwho may not be familiar with the term, goes something like this: no community should be saddledwith more environmental burdens

and less environmental benefitsthan any other. unfortunately, race and classare extremely reliable indicators as to where one might find the good stuff,like parks and trees, and where one might find the bad stuff,like power plants and waste facilities. as a black person in america,i am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollutionposes the greatest risk to my health. i am five times more likelyto live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility, which i do.

these land-use decisionscreated the hostile conditions that lead to problems like obesity,diabetes and asthma. why would someone leave their home to gofor a brisk walk in a toxic neighborhood? our 27 percent obesity rateis high even for this country, and diabetes comes with it. one out of four south bronxchildren has asthma. our asthma hospitalization rate is seven times higherthan the national average. these impacts are coming everyone's way.

and we all pay dearlyfor solid waste costs, health problems associatedwith pollution and more odiously, the cost of imprisoningour young black and latino men, who possess untold amountsof untapped potential. fifty percent of our residentslive at or below the poverty line; 25 percent of us are unemployed. low-income citizens often useemergency-room visits as primary care. this comes at a high cost to taxpayersand produces no proportional benefits. poor people are not only still poor,they are still unhealthy.

fortunately, there are many peoplelike me who are striving for solutions that won't compromise the lives of low-income communities of colorin the short term, and won't destroy us all in the long term. none of us want that,and we all have that in common. so what else do we have in common? well, first of all,we're all incredibly good-looking. graduated high school, college,post-graduate degrees, traveled to interesting places,didn't have kids in your early teens,

financially stable, never been imprisoned. ok. good. but, besides being a black woman, i am different from most of youin some other ways. i watched nearly half of the buildingsin my neighborhood burn down. my big brother lenny fought in vietnam, only to be gunned downa few blocks from our home. jesus. i grew up with a crack houseacross the street.

yeah, i'm a poor black childfrom the ghetto. these things make me different from you. but the things we have in common set me apart from mostof the people in my community, and i am in between these two worlds with enough of my heartto fight for justice in the other. so how did things get so different for us? in the late '40s, my dad --a pullman porter, son of a slave -- bought a house in the hunts pointsection of the south bronx,

and a few years later, he married my mom. at the time, the community was a mostlywhite, working-class neighborhood. my dad was not alone. and as others like him pursuedtheir own version of the american dream, white flight became commonin the south bronx and in many cities around the country. red-lining was used by banks,wherein certain sections of the city, including ours, were deemedoff-limits to any sort of investment. many landlords believed it was moreprofitable to torch their buildings

and collect insurance money ratherthan to sell under those conditions -- dead or injured former tenantsnotwithstanding. hunts point was formerlya walk-to-work community, but now residents had neitherwork nor home to walk to. a national highway construction boomwas added to our problems. in new york state, robert moses spearheadedan aggressive highway-expansion campaign. one of its primary goals wasto make it easier for residents of wealthy communitiesin westchester county to go to manhattan.

the south bronx, which lies in between,did not stand a chance. residents were often givenless than a month's notice before their buildings were razed. 600,000 people were displaced. the common perception was that only pimps and pushersand prostitutes were from the south bronx. and if you are toldfrom your earliest days that nothing good is going to comefrom your community, that it's bad and ugly,

how could it not reflect on you? so now, my family's propertywas worthless, save for that it was our home,and all we had. and luckily for me, that homeand the love inside of it, along with help from teachers, mentorsand friends along the way, was enough. now, why is this story important? because from a planning perspective, economic degradationbegets environmental degradation, which begets social degradation.

the disinvestment that beganin the 1960s set the stage for all the environmentalinjustices that were to come. antiquated zoning and land-useregulations are still used to this day to continue putting pollutingfacilities in my neighborhood. are these factors taken into considerationwhen land-use policy is decided? what costs are associatedwith these decisions? and who pays? who profits? does anything justifywhat the local community goes through? this was "planning" -- in quotes --

that did not haveour best interests in mind. once we realized that, we decidedit was time to do our own planning. that small park i told you about earlier was the first stage of buildinga greenway movement in the south bronx. i wrote a one-and-a-quarter-milliondollar federal transportation grant to design the planfor a waterfront esplanade with dedicated on-street bike paths. physical improvements help informpublic policy regarding traffic safety, the placement of the wasteand other facilities,

which, if done properly, don't compromisea community's quality of life. they provide opportunitiesto be more physically active, as well as local economic development. think bike shops, juice stands. we secured 20 million dollarsto build first-phase projects. this is lafayette avenue -- and that's redesignedby mathews nielsen landscape architects. and once this path is constructed,it'll connect the south bronx with more than 400 acresof randall's island park.

right now we're separated by about 25 feetof water, but this link will change that. as we nurture the natural environment,its abundance will give us back even more. we run a project called the bronx[environmental] stewardship training, which provides job training in the fieldsof ecological restoration, so that folks from our communityhave the skills to compete for these well-paying jobs. little by little, we're seedingthe area with green-collar jobs -- and with people that have botha financial and personal stake in their environment.

the sheridan expresswayis an underutilized relic of the robert moses era, built with no regard for the neighborhoodsthat were divided by it. even during rush hour,it goes virtually unused. the community createdan alternative transportation plan that allows for the removalof the highway. we have the opportunity now to bringtogether all the stakeholders to re-envision how this 28 acrescan be better utilized for parkland, affordable housingand local economic development.

we also built new york city's first greenand cool roof demonstration project on top of our offices. cool roofs are highly-reflectivesurfaces that don't absorb solar heat, and pass it on tothe building or atmosphere. green roofs are soil and living plants. both can be used insteadof petroleum-based roofing materials that absorb heat, contributeto urban "heat island" effect and degrade under the sun, which we in turn breathe.

green roofs also retainup to 75 percent of rainfall, so they reduce a city's need to fundcostly end-of-pipe solutions -- which, incidentally, are often located in environmental justicecommunities like mine. and they provide habitatsfor our little friends! [butterfly] so cool! anyway, the demonstrationproject is a springboard for our own green roofinstallation business,

bringing jobs and sustainableeconomic activity to the south bronx. [green is the new black ...] (laughter) (applause) i like that, too. anyway, i know chris told usnot to do pitches up here, but since i have all of your attention: we need investors. end of pitch. it's better to askfor forgiveness than permission. anyway --

ok. katrina. prior to katrina, the south bronxand new orleans' ninth ward had a lot in common. both were largely populatedby poor people of color, both hotbeds of cultural innovation:think hip-hop and jazz. both are waterfront communitiesthat host both industries and residents in close proximity of one another. in the post-katrina era,we have still more in common. we're at best ignored,and maligned and abused, at worst,

by negligent regulatory agencies,pernicious zoning and lax governmental accountability. neither the destruction of the ninth wardnor the south bronx was inevitable. but we have emerged with valuable lessons about how to dig ourselves out. we are more than simplynational symbols of urban blight or problems to be solvedby empty campaign promises of presidents come and gone. now will we let the gulf coastlanguish for a decade or two,

like the south bronx did? or will we take proactive steps and learn from the homegrown resourceof grassroots activists that have been born of desperationin communities like mine? now listen, i do not expect individuals, corporations or governmentto make the world a better place because it is right or moral. this presentation today only representssome of what i've been through. like a tiny little bit. you've no clue.

but i'll tell you later,if you want to know. but -- i know it's the bottom line,or one's perception of it, that motivates people in the end. i'm interested in what i like to callthe "triple bottom line" that sustainable development can produce. developments that have the potentialto create positive returns for all concerned:the developers, government and the communitywhere these projects go up. at present, that's not happeningin new york city.

and we are operating with a comprehensiveurban-planning deficit. a parade of government subsidies is going to propose big-box and stadiumdevelopments in the south bronx, but there is scant coordinationbetween city agencies on how to deal with the cumulative effectsof increased traffic, pollution, solid waste and the impacts on open space. and their approaches to local economicand job development are so lame it's not even funny. because on top of that,

the world's richest sports teamis replacing the house that ruth built by destroying twowell-loved community parks. now, we'll have even lessthan that stat i told you about earlier. and although less than 25 percentof south bronx residents own cars, these projects includethousands of new parking spaces, yet zip in terms of mass public transit. now, what's missing from the larger debate is a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis between not fixing an unhealthy,environmentally-challenged community,

versus incorporating structural,sustainable changes. my agency is working closelywith columbia university and others to shine a light on these issues. now let's get this straight:i am not anti-development. ours is a city, not a wilderness preserve. and i've embraced my inner capitalist. and, but i don't have -- you probably all have,and if you haven't, you need to. so i don't have a problemwith developers making money.

there's enough precedent out thereto show that a sustainable, community-friendly developmentcan still make a fortune. fellow tedsters bill mcdonoughand amory lovins -- both heroes of mine by the way --have shown that you can actually do that. i do have a problemwith developments that hyper-exploit politically vulnerablecommunities for profit. that it continues is a shame upon us all, because we are all responsiblefor the future that we create. but one of the things i doto remind myself of greater possibilities,

is to learn from visionariesin other cities. this is my version of globalization. let's take bogota. poor, latino, surrounded byrunaway gun violence and drug trafficking; a reputation not unlikethat of the south bronx. however, this city was blessedin the late 1990s with a highly-influentialmayor named enrique peã±alosa. he looked at the demographics. few bogotanos own cars,

yet a huge portion of the city's resourceswas dedicated to serving them. if you're a mayor, you cando something about that. his administration narrowed key municipalthoroughfares from five lanes to three, outlawed parking on those streets, expanded pedestrian walkwaysand bike lanes, created public plazas, created one of the most efficientbus mass-transit systems in the entire world. for his brilliant efforts,he was nearly impeached.

but as people began to seethat they were being put first on issues reflectingtheir day-to-day lives, incredible things happened. people stopped littering. crime rates dropped, because the streetswere alive with people. his administration attacked severaltypical urban problems at one time, and on a third-world budget, at that. we have no excusein this country, i'm sorry. but the bottom line is:their people-first agenda

was not meant to penalizethose who could actually afford cars, but rather, to provide opportunitiesfor all bogotanos to participate in the city's resurgence. that development should not come at the expense of the majorityof the population is still considereda radical idea here in the u.s. but bogota's examplehas the power to change that. you, however, are blessedwith the gift of influence. that's why you're here and why youvalue the information we exchange.

use your influence in support of comprehensive,sustainable change everywhere. don't just talk about it at ted. this is a nationwide policy agendai'm trying to build, and as you all know,politics are personal. help me make green the new black. help me make sustainability sexy. make it a part of your dinnerand cocktail conversations. help me fight for environmentaland economic justice.

support investmentswith a triple-bottom-line return. help me democratize sustainabilityby bringing everyone to the table, and insisting that comprehensiveplanning can be addressed everywhere. oh good, glad i have a little more time! listen -- when i spoke to mr. gorethe other day after breakfast, i asked him how environmental justiceactivists were going to be included in his new marketing strategy. his response was a grant program. i don't think he understoodthat i wasn't asking for funding.

i was making him an offer. what troubled me was that thistop-down approach is still around. now, don't get me wrong, we need money. but grassroots groupsare needed at the table during the decision-making process. of the 90 percent of the energythat mr. gore reminded us that we waste every day, don't add wasting our energy, intelligence and hard-earned experience to that count.

i have come from so farto meet you like this. please don't waste me. by working together, we can become one of those small,rapidly-growing groups of individuals who actually have the audacity and courage to believe that we actuallycan change the world. we might have come to this conference from very, very differentstations in life, but believe me, we all shareone incredibly powerful thing.

we have nothing to loseand everything to gain. ciao, bellos!