JR: In this weekend update on Language Intelligence, Bill McKibben explains why the book has been endorsed “so enthusiastically” by people “from Van Jones to Al Gore.”

What Gaga & Lincoln Have in Common: A Review of Joe Romm’s Language Intelligence

by Bill McKibben via HuffPost

You may wonder why so many progressive leaders — from Van Jones to Al Gore — are lining up to endorse Joe Romm’s new book.

In part, of course, it’s because we admire what he’s done at Climate Progress. He’s not just turned it into by far the most important blog about climate science — he’s modeled the way forward for focused blogs of all types. And he’s done it despite the fact that climate science can be difficult, technical, and depressing: his skill as a writer and editor is to clarify, to repeat, to make vivid.

Which leads us to this book, and the other reason people are endorsing it so enthusiastically. We know that progressives haven’t been very good at what (dully) we call “messaging.” We’ve watched for years as a string of right-wing mediocrities have somehow convinced millions of people to vote against their interests and for the policies that have led to both economic inequality and ecological peril. The only thing they’ve had going for them is a command of some of the simple, deep, and time-honored techniques that Romm describes in this fascinating new book.

Rhetoric used to be one of the standard subjects for any educated person. Techniques like “anaphora” and “chiasmus” were the staples of any preacher or politician — Lincoln knew what he was doing. Now, when they’re employed, it’s by instinct or accident; hence Lady Gaga.

But Romm’s simple volume will let anyone in on the secrets. You may not be a Demosthenes overnight, but there aren’t many Demosthenes out there. All you have to be is better than some blow-dryed fellow with a list of GOP talking points. And that’s well within your grasp, as long as you’ve got your hands on this book.

JR: You can buy the Kindle here and the paperback here.

Arctic sea ice extent takes a nosedive this year. What does it mean for us? (Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

by Ryan M. Colker, via Institute for Market Transformation

Buildings serve as the cornerstone of the nation’s economy. Citizens depend on them for housing, businesses operate in them, and children learn in them. They represent more than half of the nation’s wealth. New construction and renovation activity amounts to over $800 billion annually. The sector employs over 10 million people (five percent of total U.S. employment) and is responsible for 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Beyond the economic impact of buildings, building owners and occupants and government agencies look to them to provide numerous services. From protection from man-made and natural hazards and maintenance of occupant comfort to accessibility and sustainability, buildings provide many benefits to society.

The U.S. Congress recognized these diverse needs in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 where they defined high-performance buildings as those that integrate and optimize on a life cycle basis of all major high performance attributes, including: energy conservation, environment, safety, security, durability, accessibility, cost-benefit, productivity, sustainability, functionality, and operational considerations.

However, given the broad and far-reaching impacts of buildings, no national buildings policy exists. Programs are scattered across numerous agencies often with little to no coordination. Recently, the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified 94 separate initiatives in 11 agencies with implications for private sector green buildings alone. Accounting for all buildings related programs, the numbers are likely even more staggering.

Understanding how each program meets national goals related to buildings, the economy, security, and the environment is impossible without clearly identified priorities and the metrics necessary to verify such achievements. As policymakers struggle to cut budgets and federal agencies must respond, efficiencies can be gained through better coordination and cooperation across agencies and programs. A National Buildings Policy with clearly identified priorities, metrics, and recommendations for cooperation can help to reinvigorate the building sector and provide much needed focus to its diversity of participants.

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by Greg Hanscom, via Grist

In the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine, longtime education writer Paul Tough has an insightful treatise on President Obama’s policies regarding poverty — the issue that, more than any other, holds American cities down, and one that we seem incapable of addressing in any rational, lasting way.

Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes, a book about the Harlem Children’s Zone, a trailblazing program that offers poor kids a web of services designed to carry them out of the ’hood and into the middle class. On the campaign trail in 2007, Obama promised to pour a few billion dollars a year into creating Children’s Zones in cities across the country. Here he is in a speech at the community center in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C.:

We know this works. And if we know it works, there’s no reason this program should stop at the end of those blocks in Harlem. It’s time to change the odds for neighborhoods all across America.

The proposal, which Obama later dubbed Promise Neighborhoods, sent waves of excitement through American cities. In 2009, dozens of communities hastily compiled proposals to be one of the first 20 test cases.

At the time, I was writing for a magazine in Baltimore, a city that has suffered the whole stew of urban ills, from soaring dropout rates to drug abuse and crime. When Tough came to town to speak about his book, people packed a local synagogue to see him.

After Tough’s talk, representatives of community groups stood to ask for his advice on how to win the Promise Neighborhood funding and to make the impassioned case that their proposal outshone all the others. Tough, of course, had no say in who won the government money, but the tone that night said volumes about the desperation people felt in inner-city neighborhoods — and the hope they put in the new president. (I wrote a story about Baltimore’s Promise Neighborhood efforts here. The city was not among those selected for the pilot program.)

But as Tough writes in his Times Magazine piece, the billions that Obama promised have never materialized. Instead, the program doled out just $40 million to a handful of cities in its first two years, while another $60 million will be distributed later this year. Obama’s campaign strategist David Axelrod told Tough that the administration had to practice “economic triage” to prevent a second Great Depression, and Promise Neighborhoods was one program that was left on the battlefield.

But the money isn’t the only thing that disappeared. Tough writes that the entire conversation seems to have vanished:

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