• An indicator of how healthy society is can be found in the waistline of its children. The U.S. struggle with obesity is at the core of the new food standards in schools just announced by USDA. While there’s change for the better—more whole grains, less flavored milk—there’s still room for improvement, in particular, deep green and orange veggies will have weekly, not daily, requirements. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.
• Is Governor Kasich holding Northeast Ohio’s top priority highway rebuilding projects hostage to his privatizing the Turnpike idea as Angie Schmidt suggests in Rust Wire?Schmidt’s strongest points are made when she talks about how innovative rethinking of transportation has reduced carbon emissions and actually saved citizens in Portland money. Rather than be perpetually broke, Ohio’s DOT needs a new framework for saving Ohioans money in their hardpressed budgets by providing transportation options, not longer drives.
• Rails-to-Trails Conservancy reports that new bike and hike trails often benefit rural areas. They published their report, Active Transpiration Beyond Urban Centers: Walking and Bicycling in Small Towns and Rural America to counter perceptions that transportation options only benefit big cities.

Why is climate change such a challenging issue to tackle? What happens when you introduce a philosophical approach to the problem? GreenCityBlueLake Institute and the Natural History Museum did—with Case ethics professor, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, at the Ethics of Climate Change presentation back in December.

Climate change is an intergenerational concern, he said, and the thorniness of that raises a new question of ethics. “The people around 100 years from now that I’m doing this to, what would it be like to look them in the face?”

Solutions to climate change may come from a better system of global governance. “Our institutions work within a nation-state, and that’s not conducive to dealing with a problem on a global scale. It lets powerful nations make powerless people in the world, such as small island states.

“It’s not often that you get a new question of ethics (but with climate change) our system mostly doesn’t think beyond the current generation. There’s no way to have that (conversation) with our future generations. They can’t give us anything, but we can ruin their worlds.

We need to develop a moral status of non-human beings, and to try to think as a society beyond election cycles and quarterly returns. That is why climate change is ‘the perfect moral storm.’”

“What does it say about us that the over use of resources—that our production method is based on vaporizing all the carbon on the planet—is the wanton destruction of life?”

We have positive examples of how to respond, he added, notably, with our grandparents and the Greatest Generation. “They had the moral idea of making sacrifice for the future. It become the noble choice.”

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· Kaid Benfield blogs that Cleveland and its suburbs will be stronger when our corporate leaders admit that re-investing in the city/a dense urban place benefits their business by helping to retain workers and boost productivity. Benfield writes: “perhaps the strongest potential force for bringing sense to our settlement patterns and strengthening central cities may be the business community.” He cites the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland study that looks at density in relation to productivity. We agree—corporate sprawl the likes of Eaton and UH and American Greetings is sending the wrong signal to our elected officials and policy makers: That there's no problem with business as usual; with MPOS subsidizing low density/high energy development with highway expansions and interchanges; and with cities that refuse to rezone for traditional town centers not cul-de-sac gated communities.

· Removing highways that sap the life out of cities is a hot topic on the national stage. Next American City is hosting a discussion on February 23 that looks at efforts to tear down urban highways in Providence, Milwaukee, Philly and the Bronx (other efforts of note include Buffalo and Seattle). Cleveland’s West Shoreway should be included in these national discussions.

· EcoWatch reports that more than 250 Ohioans—led by State Rep. Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown)—assembled on the west lawn of the Ohio Statehouse yesterday to voice their opposition to hydraulic fracturing.

From Cleveland’s Complete Streets policy to the Regional Sewer District’s Stormwater Program, we’re watching how the big trends in sustainability are taking shape this year. Success will be measured to a large degree by how well regional planners and policy makers pivot from agreeing to use these new tools to making something real with them.

Below we break down what’s at stake and offer a glimpse at best practices with an eye towards true sustainability and positive outcomes.

Cleveland’s Green and Complete Streets Policy

When it was creating the ordinance, the mayor’s office informed city council and the group of advocates working on sustainable transportation that it wouldn’t budge on setting a $1 million cap on Complete and Green Streets. So the first area to watch as ordinance moves to policy is how to work innovatively within that confined space? Also important is to keep close tabs on the city’s oversight committee—will it adopt ALL of the latest thinking around urban street design as it hammers out details of its new design manual, metrics, and pilot projects? We hope so.

The next important area to watch is how well integrated into city operations this policy becomes?