Love + Regeneration, Volume 3, Issue 1

A Quarterly Journal from McLennan Design.

Rediscovering our relationship to the natural world.

Volume 3 Issue 1

NEWS! Climate Pledge Arena

CELEBRATE Love+ Green Building

LEAD Humanity’s Grand Design Assignment

SUMMER 2020

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JASON F. MCLENNAN

GRAPHIC DESIGN

MICHELLE HENRY

CONTRIBUTORS

KRISTINA AVRAMOVIC OLDANI, WENDELL BERRY, GALEN CARLSON

SOCIAL MEDIA

McLennan Design respectfully acknowledges the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples, who, throughout the generations, stewarded and thrived on the land where we live and work.

August 2020, Volume 3, Issue 1 LOVE + REGENERATION is a quarterly publication of McLennan Design, LLC. © 2020 by McLennan Design. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Content may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission and is intended for informational purposes only.

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NAVIGATE

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CELEBRATE

LOVE+GREEN BUILDING: You and Me and the Beautiful Planet A new book written by architect and global green warrior Jason F. McLennan and whimsically illustrated by engineer and educator José Luis Gutiérrez Brezmes

LEAD

Humanity’s Grand Design Assignment 5 Big Things to Save Life as We Know It

By Jason F. McLennan

ASPIRE

Climate Pledge Arena NHL Seattle and OVG’s partnership with Amazon and commitment to the Climate Pledge are showing what truly environmentally responsible businesses should look like

EDIFY

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

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e didn’t see this pandemic coming, even though its been a possibility for many years. 2020 started off with a bang in many ways – and then everywhere, around the world, things ground to a halt or to sputtering fits and starts. This has proven to be one of the most challenging years in modern history and when exactly we may get through this is still being debated. In the meantime, we are all doing what we can to social distance and protect the health of our families and friends. We are living through a time when the US government is proving completely ill-equipped to deal with the health and economic crisis that has ensued and morally bereft of compassion and empathy for those suffering. Issues of racial inequality that have been undealt with for decades are finally bubbling to the foreground, and again we wait to see the government respond adequately to the issues finally clear to so many. McLennan Design has always and continues to stand with Black, Brown and Indigenous people who have been so unfairly and inhumanely treated for so long. An integral part of our core mission to highlight environmental issues is to also shine a light on the environmental racism and discrimination wrapped up within these systems.

2020 is shaping up to be the Year of Perfect Vision – when so many things that are long overdue for change are clear to so many – beyond just the ‘choir’ who have been raising these issues for so long. It is our collective hope that by 2021 we start out with a new administration and a new renewed commitment to taking better care of both people and the natural environment focusing our attention on the massive climate crisis and species extinctions that require our most urgent and creative solutions.

For now – in the summer – the sun is shining, and we have all been working remotely for months, with more months ahead. We miss our clients and partners as we tire of only Zoom communication. We are grateful for those who have stuck with us and who share in the optimism that there is light at the end of this tunnel soon enough.

We have decided to reduce the number of issues of this journal from 4 a year to 2, with more time in between for introspection. At McLennan Design we are still having a productive year – helping to jumpstart an amazing development in Chicago, conduct corporate sustainability consulting for some major players, and launch the Climate Pledge Arena, which is highlighted inside these pages.

We don’t know what the future will hold, but for the time being we are enjoying the beautiful weather and the extra time with family – being closer to home and the clarity that this time is creating. We wish everyone peace, health and prosperity.

Warm regards, Jason F. McLennan

CELEBRATE

SUMMER 2020

LOVE+GREEN BUILDING: YOU AND ME AND THE BEAUTIFUL PLANET We are so excited to announce the release of the brand-new book LOVE+GREEN BUILDING: You and Me and the Beautiful Planet, written by architect and global green warrior Jason F. McLennan.

A little book with a big message, LOVE+GREEN BUILDING provides genuine insights into why a sustained awakening of the heart is key to turning back the tide of climate change and environmental degradation.

Personal, positive, and open-hearted, LOVE+GREEN BUILDING invokes our deep human capacity for compassion, care, and innate kinship with nature to address critical issues related to the health and well-being of our beautiful planet.

Whimsically illustrated by engineer and educator José Luis Gutiérrez Brezmes, LOVE+GREEN BUILDING provides inspiration for all – individuals and organizations, young and old – who seek to unite together and collaborate on the mission to reframe society for a truly sustainable and regenerative future.

For more information on how to order this book, visit the International Living Future Institute’s Ecotone bookstore.

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Watch a video with a reading of Love + Green Building from Jason F. McLennan.

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Humanity’s Grand Design Assignment 5 Big Things to Save Life as We Know

BY Jason F. McLennan WITH Kristina Avramovic Oldani

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Back in the 1990s, my mentor Bob Berkebile used to always say to me, “Jason, 2020 is going to be the year of perfect vision—the year when it becomes clear to society that it needs to change,� and I think he may turn out to be right. The 1970s saw the rise of the environmental movement, but in the 80s and 90s there was a lull, and those decades were really all about rampant consumerism. We began to wake up in the 2000s to some degree, and we navigated challenges and setbacks and prepared for change in the 2010s, as issues like climate change began to get real attention. I felt an excitement in the air in the past decade at times; it seemed the winds of change blew for the first time ever at our backs instead of in our faces, at least until the 2016 presidential election.

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I clearly recall a conversation with Janine Benyus in 2010 in which I discussed with her the level of anxiousness for change I was seeing and felt from so many places around the world. She introduced me to a new word, the German word ‘Zugunruhe’.

Zugunruhe means ‘migratory restlessness’ and describes a biological phenomenon whereby migrating animals prepare themselves psychologically and physiologically for their migration. This word and concept captivated me and eventually became the name and focus of my 2011 self-help book for environmentalists wanting to make change.

What I realized in writing the book during this decade—and which is proving even more true today— was that as much as we thought we were fighting to create change, what we were really doing was experiencing our own societal Zugunruhe. Feeling restless, preparing for and beginning to adapt to the changes that were yet to come. This entire last decade seemed to be about preparation for a great transition.

And then 2020 hit.

We’ve needed for some time to hit pause on our many destructive practices and runaway extractive economies, to literally shut down our momentum as a civilization enough to give us a good, long look at ourselves. Here we are in the Year of Perfect Vision, and life imitates art with a poetic fervor. COVID and the murder of George Floyd and so many others, have made the impacts of systemic racism and social injustice more apparent than ever. The student led climate movement has brought the crisis of our planet to the forefront. We can see more clearly than ever before the deep harm we’ve inflicted on each other and on this world we share. It now falls to us to find the collective will to shift direction.

I feel in my soul that there is light ahead—on COVID, certainly, but even the larger and more pressing crises of escalating climate change and rampant social injustice. We’ve been roused from the status quo like a flock of geese. We could just settle down again when this wave of momentum subsides, or we could use it to finally catalyze our migration. The 2020s must be the Decisive Decade and the start of fundamental, deep-rooted change. In this moment of great pausing we need to ask ourselves very sincerely the profound question, “What does the world need from us?”

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What does the world need from us?

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I think the answer is obvious: it’s time we evolved. Literally evolved.

‘Punctuated equilibrium’ is a biological concept which describes a period of rapid evolution brought on by crisis or a quickly changing environment.

The process of punctuated equilibrium leads to a new formation: cladogenesis — an evolutionary divergence. As a metaphor, we are in a moment of punctuated equilibrium and in need of a divergence from old ways of thinking that are no longer serving us or the planet of which we are part.

I want to acknowledge here that the ‘migration’ required of us is daunting. The enormity and comprehension of the change needed is overwhelming.

And the heaviness of the pain and suffering running rampant across the earth and all its life including us is horribly depressing, at times paralyzingly so.

But the antidote to this collectively felt anxiety and depression is acting with love.

To this end, this article examines five big things that we can and must do on behalf of the planet we live on to halt, then begin to reverse, and eventually regenerate vitality on earth, including in our societies. This list is by no means a comprehensive accounting of all that needs to be done to heal the planet, but by addressing these five big things we will accomplish a massive sea change for the better.

This is the movement’s call to humanity. This is our big assignment.

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1.

DECARBONIZE EVERYTHING

First, and as quickly as possible, we need to decarbonize everything. We need to end the fossil fuel era in this decade and stop extracting and burning fossil fuels immediately.

While the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fluctuated over time, prior to the Industrial Revolution it held around 280 parts per million (ppm). Safe concentrations of carbon dioxide are below 350 ppm. We passed that threshold in 1988 and have now hit around 416 ppm.1 This increase is warming our atmosphere dangerously, with horrific results. Rising sea levels are displacing thousands across the world and threaten the homes and livelihoods of millions more. Species are failing to adapt to warmer temperatures, especially in the ocean, and we’re experiencing massive extinctions.

Weather events are becoming more frequent and severe, claiming lives and causing significant and enormously expensive damage. As climate action organization 350.org announces succinctly, “It’s warming. It’s us. We’re sure. It’s bad.”2 But they go on: “We can fix it.”3 Drawing down our carbon emissions to zero is the most urgently needed action to slow, then stop, the acceleration of climate change and eventually begin to heal and regenerate life on earth.

To this end, the first step is to transition to the full electrification of everything. The good news is that we already have viable and, in many cases, superior alternatives to all fossil fuel burning conveniences: electric cars, renewable energy that is cost effective, batteries, LED lights, heat pump-based HVAC systems, and induction stoves. We have all the technol14

ogies and systems we need now to decarbonize. All we need is the will to do so on a global scale.

At an individual level, we need to stop purchasing internal combustion vehicles. No one should ever buy one again. We need to de-couple from natural gas and upgrade everything to electric based systems. We need to disentangle our lives from the extraction, sale, and burning of fossil fuels in our world simply by not buying the technology that makes use of them. As demand for electric alternatives has risen, so has availability, and now we’re seeing costs decline due to the uptick in adoption. We’re out of excuses to buy fossil fuel burning technology.

Period.

At local levels, we need to demand building and transportation policies that not only reward good choices, but actively phase out fuel burning technology by banning all combustion. Berkeley, California was the first city to ban natural gas appliances in new construction in the summer of 2019 and more than twenty cities quickly followed suit. Others, like Brookline, Massachusetts, have banned new gas hook-ups city-wide.4 Such building code amendments are critical to reflecting the urgency of climate change and the significant contribution of domestic natural gas use to overall carbon emissions.

Development largely is governed at a municipal level and it is therefore critical that local building codes catch up to the urgency of our need to decarbonize.

Climate Pledge Arena in collaboration with Amazon, Seattle Kraken, and OVG Group.

In the various communities to which we belong—work, faith, educational, and municipal—we need to push leadership to entirely divest from fossil fuels. Just recently, over 40 institutions of faith spanning 14 countries came together to divest from fossil fuels, the largest ever joint divestment from the global faith community. Given the pandemic’s effects on the economy, 350.org applauds this collaborative effort’s critical timing: “This is a clear signal to the rest of the world that any future investments or stimulus funds must reject fossil fuels and provide long-term structural emissions reductions.

The solutions to the economic crisis are the solutions to the climate crisis. It’s high time for governments to accelerate the transition needed towards a 100% renewable energy future. Any financial intervention must put people and their livelihoods at its core.”5 While amazing models like this are heartening, only a rapid and collaborated divestment movement will have the intended effects.

We need corporations to make concretized, quantifiable, and scientifically backed carbon reduction pledges and follow

through on them. We’re seeing promising trends: 23% of Fortune 500 companies now have solid carbon reduction plans that disclose their emissions, set ambitious reduction targets, all on more aggressive timelines.6 In 2019, Amazon adopted a climate pledge that aims to achieve net-zero carbon across the business by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. It further created a $100 million dollar conservation and restoration fund.7 Early in 2020, Microsoft went a step further by committing to be carbon negative by 2030, with a $1 billion climate innovation fund. Apple committed to be 100 percent carbon neutral for its supply chain and products by 2030. They are already carbon neutral for corporate emissions worldwide, but the company plans to bring its entire carbon footprint to net zero 20 years sooner than IPCC targets. These commitments have resulted in Apple shrinking its carbon footprint by 35% since 2015, despite its continued growth.8 This kind of leadership is required across the transportation, service, and manufacturing industries to enact the rapid and comprehensive decarbonization needed.

At the governmental level, we need laws to reflect the climate crisis and the unviability of continuing to burn fossil fuels. We need funding, particularly in this moment, to support a future powered by renewables, with investments in technological advancements and job creation toward a living future. Germany just made a bold move by requiring all gas stations add electric vehicle charging capabilities. Policies like this are urgently needed to push us at the national level toward a comprehensive adoption of electrification.

Taken together, the effects of decarbonization will be monumental, and not just as action against climate change. Already, the price of utility scale solar energy is cheaper than that of fossil fuels, spurring rapid adoption of the switch toward renewables.9 Even though initial costs of solar are higher for the consumer, at an average cost of between 3 cents and 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, solar achieves cost parity with fossil fuels fairly quickly, which cost 5 – 17 cents per kilowatt-hour.10 Improvements to air quality have been made apparent in the relatively brief amount of time since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. Lockdown efforts in some places, like Jalandhar, India in the northern Punjab state, have resulted in clear skies and Himalayan views obscured for over 30 years by heavy air pollution. 11 As a global community, we can demand such views, such access to clean air. That we’ve gotten a taste of what a world with fewer fossil fuels looks like bodes well for this migration.

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Taken together, the effects of decarbonization will be monumental, and not just as action against climate change.

An end to the fossil fuel era promises an end to the particular evils and corruption intricately woven into the politics of energy. “The Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world,” writes Boston University Professor of Political Science Neta Crawford in a recent white paper entitled “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War.” 12 This consumption is in an antagonistic relationship to the military’s interest in creating energy stability by securing oil from regions of the world embroiled in conflict. An entire weapons and transportation industry has been built around our need for energy security, and this industry is economically fueled by conflict. The United States has been in an ongoing state of war since 2001, we’ve had only a few years of peace since the turn of the twentieth century. And while the Pentagon officially recognizes and understands the threat of climate change on national security, they do not officially concede their role in perpetuating the corrupt and enormously harmful military industrial complex by way of engaging in this relationship. “The US military has an opportunity to reduce the risks associated with climate change — and the

security threats associated with climate change — by reducing their role in creating greenhouse gas emissions,” Crawford states simply.13 And last-though certainly not least, our waters will regain dramatic health should we complete this transition. The horribly destructive practices of fracking and other modes of mining and drilling for oil and coal, dump chemicals and unwanted quantities of rock and soil in waterways.

Oil spills have horrific effects on marine life and have created massive economic hardship in regions that rely on the sea for their livelihoods. Increasingly, these side effects are factored into the “true costs” of fossil fuel consumption, and rightly so. Without these kinds of failures and unintended, but very possible, even probable outcomes, renewable energy’s true costs are better reflected in the sticker price while the technology is far from perfect, improvements are trending toward elegant, comprehensively beneficial solutions to our energy needs.

The end of the fossil fuel era promises a cleaner, quieter, more peaceful, healthier world with air quality that surpasses any experienced in the past two hundred years. All that is needed is the collective will to change.

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2.

BAN ALL SINGLE-USE PLASTIC AND REDLIST CHEMICALS

Second, we need to ban all single-use plastics and red list chemicals.

We have quickly become aware of how devastating an addiction we have to single-use plastics—products that are intended to be used just once and then discarded.

Single-use plastics—grocery bags, plastic cutlery, food packaging and beverage bottles, and product packaging—make up forty percent of all plastic production.14 And while plastics certainly have their uses (especially durable plastics that can replace more energy intensive products), it’s become clear that serious and timely action is needed to battle the negative impacts of plastics whose useful life is measured in mere minutes or seconds yet have become used ubiquitously for everything. Nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold every minute around the world. In 2015, Americans purchased about 346 bottles per person for a total of 111 billion plastic beverage bottles in all.15

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We’ve heard warnings and stirrings of the plastic pollution problem for decades, but only recently have major companies like McDonalds and Starbucks started phasing out some of their single use plastics. Even these measures, like the one to ban single use straws, fail to make a meaningful dent, since every bit of packaging around fast food is single use, much of it is plastic from cups to condiment packaging and most of it is unrecyclable or ends up in a landfill or the ocean regardless of its recylcability. Isolated fast food chains banning some portion of their single-use plastic packaging does virtually nothing to move the needle on the problem of plastic pollution, no matter the promises of “saving the ocean, one straw at a time.”

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It’s unclear how long it will take for plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules.

Estimates range from 450 years to never.”16

More than 90% of the plastic produced since its introduction to consumer culture has never been recycled, and scientists say no environment on earth is free from the negative impacts of plastic pollution.17 Ten percent of a year’s worth of plastic waste finds its way into the oceans,18 totaling approximately 18 billion pounds of marine pollution annually.19 Microplastics—plastic broken down into particles less than 5 mm—have accumulated to fatal levels in thousands of sea creatures. Annually, over a million sea birds ingest fatal amounts of plastic, which block their digestive tracts and accumulate in their stomachs, resulting in starvation. 20 One hundred thousand other marine animals die each year due to plastics, either by entanglement or by ingestion.

Scientists now have evidence that nanoplastic (further degraded microplastics) particles have crossed the blood-brain barrier in fish, causing brain damage. Whether or not these compounds end up in fish flesh, and ultimately human stomachs, remains a focus of research.

But evidence suggests humans swallow an alarming amount of plastic, too. 21 In short, we will not see the halt and reversal of plastic pollution damage until single-use plastic is banned entirely across the world.

But it’s not only the overwhelming quantity of garbage created by our addiction to single-use plastic that is of concern, but also the toxicity of that garbage, and of the manufacturing processes and red list chemicals that comprise a broad spectrum of synthetic materials.

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Plastics, and the red list chemicals they contain, cause harm from the time they’re manufactured and continue to cause harm as they degrade, routinely ending up where we don’t intend. The chemical additives developed to strengthen, lend pliability, stretch, opacity or translucency, and a myriad other qualities and combinations of qualities to many materials are often highly toxic. Red list chemicals—the “worst in class”—and the many materials that contain them are known to be bioaccumulating, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and endocrine disrupting, making their way into human bloodstreams, fatty tissue, and breast milk, causing disease. 22

The added social and environmental justice components of this issue are particularly stark: Black Americans are three times more likely to die from pollution—including that created by the plastics and chemical manufacturing industries that are more likely to be located near communities of color—than white Americans.23 As air quality standards made by the EPA are revoked by the current administration, communities of color will suffer enormously.24 25 As a consumer culture, we’ve been well trained to not ask the hard but obvious questions such as, “What happens when I’m done with this? When it’s used up, breaks, fades from trends, becomes obsolete? Where does this come from? What is it made from?” Manufacturers in the plastics and chemical industries have not been compelled to disclose their ingredients or processes, nor, in many cases, do they have to prove their products’ safety.

Rather, consumers (voluntary or otherwise) engage with such products essentially blindly and at their own risk, with the burden of proof on them should (when) they become sick.

For example, perfluorinated compounds (PFC’s) are found in furniture, drapes, Teflon, Scotchguard, shampoo, dental floss, Gore-tex, denture cleaners, some popcorn bags, grease repellent coatings, camping equipment, shoes, luggage, nail polish, and eye makeup, to name a handful of instances.

They have a 4-8-year half-life, and are a known carcinogen, linked to liver, pancreatic, testicular and mammary tumors, and to cause reproductive health impairments and liver and kidney damage. They are a persistent bioaccumulative toxin made with virtually no regulation.26 Another example, halogenated flame retardants, are found in windows, waterproofing, floor, ceiling, and wall coverings, piping, cables, insulation, upholstery, textiles, fabrics, coatings, foams, and mattresses.

Many such retardants are brominated—that is they contain the element bromine—and are known to pose significant hazard to health. These are some of the most toxic chemicals we’ve made, and we’ve put them next to our bodies and our children’s bodies.

Such compounds, when they fail to inhibit fires as intended, end up making them much worse, emitting spiked amounts of carbon monoxide and other highly toxic and deadly fumes. They’ve also been linked to adrenal disease, reproductive impairment, several kinds of cancers, and autism. And they’re

persistent: though brominated flame retardants have been banned in the US since 2004, they are still detectable in newborns.27 Petrochemical fertilizers are likewise highly toxic but are liberally dumped on the land to artificially enhance the soil’s fecundity. They poison not only our food as a result, but the earth on which they are used, the surrounding air, and nearby waterways.

These chemicals are known to be carcinogenic, have caused great harm to humans and other life (perhaps most alarmingly our pollinators)28 , and will continue to cause harm as they degrade over an as yet unknown period of time.29 Recent inquiry into the decimation of pollinators due to the widespread use of petrochemicals in agriculture spells disaster for humans who, ironically, rely on these populations for food security.

Various specific chemicals and types of singleuse-plastics have been banned at the national or community level in the US and abroad, but only a wholesale, global manufacturing ban on all singleuse plastics, red list chemicals, and petrochemical fertilizers would be effective to stop and begin to reverse the damage done by these compounds.

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Only a wholesale, global manufacturing ban on all single-use plastics, red list chemicals, and petrochemical fertilizers would be effective to stop and begin to reverse the damage done by these compounds.

3.

SAVE EVERYTHING LEFT

We know that a diversity of life makes us well from a holistic perspective. In terms of our survival, diversity makes us resilient, yet we are currently living through the sixth mass extinction event.

Since 1900, over 80% of land-dwelling species’ range has been erased by human development, causing biodiversity to plummet. While many of the species thus affected are yet to be listed as endangered, research elucidates a loss of an astonishing 50% of all animals in the timeframe investigated. 30 Professor Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México led a peer reviewed study, released in 2017, that calls this devastating trend a “biological annihilation” amounting to a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization.”31 But the destruction rages on, with the estimated loss of 18.7 million acres of forest annually. Seventeen percent of the Amazon, often referred to as the lungs of the world, has been razed in the last 50 years. 32 It is incumbent upon us to stop this erasure of the world’s wild places and wildlife immediately and save all that remains of intact functioning ecosystems. And while many believe that the value of wildlife and places is inherent, this isn’t just a feel-good initiative being called for; it is absolutely imperative to our survival as a species, whose well-being is inextricably woven with that of the life with which we share the planet.

“The serious warning in our paper needs to be heeded because civilization depends utterly on the plants, animals, and microorganisms of Earth that supply it with essential ecosystem services ranging from crop pollination and protection to supplying food from the sea and maintaining a livable climate,” says report author and Stanford professor Paul Erlich. 33 E. O. Wilson’s Half Earth project, an initiative born of his 2017 book by the same title, calls for us to set aside half of the earth to protect biodiversity.

Based on the theory of island biogeography, the Half Earth Project implores us to maintain sufficient habitat for the earth’s remaining biodiversity by “comprehensively map[ping] the geospatial location and distribution of the species of our planet at high enough resolution to drive decision-making about where we have the best opportunity to protect the most species” and then setting that aside in perpetuity.34 By setting aside half, Wilson’s research team predicts we can save 85% of the earth’s remaining biodiversity. This work highlights the importance of selectively securing habitat that will support the highest diversity of life possible and providing continuity of habitat by linking such places together.

According to Conservation International, the vast majority of the earth’s remaining biodiversity lives on just 2.4% of the earth’s land distributed across 36 regions referred to as biological or biodiversity hotspots.35 This 2.4% is critical and must be saved in its entirety to support ongoing life on earth.

Additionally, key aquatic ecosystems—mangroves, estuaries, wetlands, reefs, key feeding and breeding waters, etc.—must also be saved to protect the significant diversity and quantity of life they support.

Likewise, the arctic and Antarctic regions of the world must gain increased protections as warmer temperatures and increasingly liquid seas leave them more vulnerable to extractive and exploitative industry.

The European Union has set an ambitious plan to preserve 30% of land and 30% of seas within its boundaries for the health of its biodiversity. “Making nature healthy again is key to our physical and mental wellbeing and is an ally in the fight against climate change and disease outbreaks. It is at the heart of our growth strategy, the European Green Deal, and is part of a European recovery that gives more back to the planet than it takes away,” says European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.36

The adoption of such measures across the world will begin to write a different story for our and all life’s future on this planet. This is work that can and must be done via any and all means available: land trusts are a start, but we need political will and clout behind our efforts, such as that seen in the European Union, if we are to effectively make change at scale.

Laws that govern development must reflect a mitigation hierarchy whereby development’s negative environmental impacts are chiefly avoided, minimized when unavoidable, reversed by mitigation, and finally offset when comprehensive mitigation isn’t possible. In a net-positive biodiversity approach, offsets could even be designed to result in biodiversity gains. Educational and political campaigning will be necessary to enact such environmental mitigation hierarchies and offset requirements, with the regenerative implications to the ecosystems in direct relationship with communities negatively impacted by development communicated clearly.

4.

TERRAFORM THE PLANET/ INVITE LIFE BACK

Terraform = verb (used with object) to alter the environment of (a celestial body) in order to make capable of supporting terrestrial life forms.

Saving all that’s left is certainly imperative but not in itself sufficient to fully regenerate life on earth, as humans have impacted an estimated three quarters of earth’s land surface. 37 We need to invite life back into the spaces where we’ve erased it; we need to terraform earth and serve as active healers of that which we’ve affected. While the term terraform has generally been applied to actions we might take on other planets in order to make them conducive to the life abundant on earth, it is increasingly applicable to our own planet that is quickly becoming hostile to and devoid of life, its “natural” places merely used for domesticated animals and monoculture farming. Artist Jonathan Keats explored this subject in a recent exhibit entitled “Pioneers of the Greater Holocene.” In this body of work, Keats explores ideas around forming a grass roots movement to bring life back into the nooks and crannies of modern urban areas, and part of the project distributes packets of wildflower seeds to citizens, encouraging them to spread the seeds in their urban environments, often denuded of such life. 38 Art imitates life in Keats’ work, or more accurately, shows us the way. In microcosm, this project is a template for and example of efforts needed across the globe.

Inviting life back is done in a variety of ways, many of which are included in Project Drawdown, the movement that grew from Paul Hawken’s 2017 anthology of the top 100 ways to draw carbon emissions down to zero in order to save the planet.

Included among these means is conservation agriculture, in which a no-till approach to food production slows the release of carbon into the atmosphere, stems erosion of soil, and results in less evaporation of water, staving off desertification, all paired with crop rotations which replete nutrients in soils to in turn support more robust food production. 39 Regenerative annual cropping is another initiative highlighted in Drawdown that builds on conservation agriculture. Regenerative annual cropping actively builds topsoil by adding organic matter such as compost and mulch back onto agricultural lands. By increasing the quantity and quality of soil so too is increased the soil’s ability to sequester carbon.40 In her 2014 book The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and author Kristin Ohlson writes about “our great green hope,” carbon farming. Another angle on the work of the Drawdown initiatives just discussed, she explores the massive amounts of carbon emissions resulting from conventional agricultural practices and what many farmers are doing to reverse such losses.

She specifically looks at the microorganisms in soil and their amazing ability to sequester carbon if left undisturbed. Ultimately, both books point to the truth that healing our soil will have a tremendous effect on reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, while the practices that permit this reduction have the added benefit of providing food that is more nourishing and delicious.

Regreening projects, particularly in urban areas, are another way in which we invite life back into the places we impact and inhabit. In addition to myriad aesthetic, mental health, and wellbeing benefits, a healthy urban tree population regulates temperatures, provides shade, filters air, and sequesters carbon. Nearly any plant life that can be introduced to an urban environment will have similar impacts: green roofs, living walls, and bioswales all make visible the services plants provide human communities and contribute to the overall health of their places.

These ecosystem services are essential and make regreening urban areas an important part of inviting life back.

The Trillion Trees project is a collaborative initiative by three environmental NGO powerhouses—BirdLife International, World Wildlife Fund, and Wildlife Conservation Society—founded on the vision of a world in which tree canopy is expanding, not shrinking. By focusing in three areas—ending deforestation, improving protections, and advancing restoration work—this project aims to regrow, save, and protect over a trillion trees by 2050. “There were once six trillion trees on the planet, now there are only three trillion and we’re still losing ten billion trees per year. That leads to a changing climate, a shrinking habitat for wildlife, and harder lives for billions of people. The scale of the problem calls for radical action,” reads the project’s website.41

The beaver is a keystone species that will help restore life to entire waterfronts.

Each and every one of us needs to plant dozens of trees each year. But that’s not enough, and it’s not only forests that need restoration. Wetlands, peatlands, grasslands, and marine habitats like coral reefs and mangroves have all suffered extreme degradation, but could be rewilded with human stewardship. While the need is great and covers every ecosystem and region of this earth, we can create a global community of stewards by finding ways to lend our time, resources, and talents to the restoration of degraded wild places where we live. We must further educate ourselves on the role and restoration benefits of keystone species and support conservation efforts that reintroduce these species to right imbalances in food chains with positive implications throughout ecosystems. We must learn the plant guilds of our ecoregions and work to restore them, thereby accelerating the regeneration of life in our wild places. And we can insist on laws and elect officials that reflect the urgent need we face as a global community where the health of our earth is concerned.

5.

VOTE FOR LOVE

Simply put, we must vote for love.

The stark challenges facing our world are on full display right now. In addition to the bleak realities of climate change finally sinking in at a societal level, the devastating effects of systemic injustice in the forms of racism, and gender and socio-economic disparity have never been more clearly apparent.

Truly 2020 has been the year of perfect vision in many regards.

What does it mean to vote for love? When we vote, we must ask ourselves, “Who brings us closer to ideals of regeneration? Who takes us further from the path to justice?”

Our first task in the US is to vote out Donald Trump in November, but we must go much further than that. We need to insist on and begin to shape policies that acknowledge universal rights. We need to insist on living wages, fairly distributed and quality universal healthcare. We need to vote for leaders with visions of how we achieve racial parity and structure reconciliation with the many indigenous and communities of color who have been systematically held under water in societies across the world. We need to make amends, with words, certainly, but more importantly with action.

We need political leaders who acknowledge climate change and boldly lead their constituencies—from

municipalities to entire nations—toward immediate and active mitigation and remediation of its effects.

At national and international scales, we need to vote into office those who hold a vision for how we collectively shape our democracy in a just and equitable way to move our societies forward and begin the restorative work of healing our earth.

And we need leaders with deep, nuanced, and wellinformed understandings of the intersectionality and interconnectivity of climate, environmental, and social justice failings. Voting for love means seeking out solutions that are comprehensively good, understanding that problems aren’t solved in isolation.

The COVID pandemic has given us such a perfect object lesson in the insidious and interconnected nature of injustice. The inequity inherent in our health system, in which many—particularly people of color—do not receive adequate medical care is plain to see. In Illinois where 14% of the population is Black, 40% of COVID deaths reported as of April were Black patients.42 Other states with similar demographic makeups have reported similar statistics. The reasons for this disparity are nuanced and interrelated, but include the overall comparatively poor health of poor and Black

communities paired with the lack of access to quality health care; the lack of access to good jobs— the kind that allow one to work from home during a pandemic, for instance; and exposure to persistent environmental pollution and poor air quality, which is linked to lack of trees in poor and Black urban neighborhoods, and proximity to pollutionproducing industry (be it chemical, agricultural, or extractive) in rural or semi-rural places.43 Solutions that attempt to address any single contributing factor to the exclusion of others will be ineffectual; solutions that attempt to fix one problem while compounding another will be unjust and ineffectual.

Only leaders who refuse to compromise on holistically good solutions can lead us forward toward a living future.

The inequity inherent in our judicial system, beginning with our police departments and working its way insidiously through all our governing bodies—local governments, the courts, the industrial prison complex, etc.—has reached a boiling point with the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. As a result, the clarion call for justice has grown in volume exponentially in the past weeks.

The persistence of climate deniers and science decriers in the public spotlight too has reached a tipping point. An insistence on a reckoning with the predicament we’re in on this earth has been called for, powerfully, by youth who are suffering from anxiety and depression as a result of the enormity of the shit show we’ve landed ourselves in and are demanding change.

If nature has anything to teach us about how we live in community, peacefully and prosperously on this earth, it is that by hurting each other and the host of living things—whether by brute physical means or by more invisible means like unjust laws, implicit bias, ignorance, and carelessness—we hurt ourselves. The time has come that we migrate to a new, collectively held understanding that what we do to others, we do to ourselves. That the zero-sum paradigm is false. That until we achieve equality, we will not achieve equanimity on this earth. Voting for leaders who understand this and will work tirelessly to bring about change is voting for love.

Conclusion Our very survival as a civilization requires that we apply ourselves on a global scale to these changes. Humanity has its assignment. What if this became the rallying focus around the world?

This divergence, this new, mature emergence of humanity, should be called Homo Regenesis. We must evolve past being merely apes that think, to those that heal and restore, those that deserve this wonderful planet. We need to recognize that so many indigenous peoples all over the world carry knowledge of how to achieve the vitality we aspire to on our earth and in our communities. We need to amplify their voices and learn from and follow them in the pursuit of a living future.

What the world needs from humanity right now is for us to use our agency—our technologies and knowledge and our compassion for life—to regenerate the Earth. We are all agents of regeneration as soon as we so choose to be.

What happens to grief, anxiety, and depression—which so many of us are currently feeling in these disruptive times— when you reclaim your agency? It transmutes. Woeful energy takes on meaning when applied in action. I get that change is hard, that what is required is overwhelming and the distance we must migrate is far, that we all are so afraid. True bravery is facing those fears – not by burying them or denying them but by acknowledging them and stepping into them… or diving into them as the case may be. When you let go of fear your heart has an infinite capacity for love. And in the end, I truly believe that all that will sustain us in the decades ahead is a sustained awakening of the human heart. This is the sign on the front door of my house. I put it there to drill this sentence into my children’s heads.

So this is what I would ask of all of you reading this essay at this time: accept the reality of where we are…and let go.

Step bravely into this moment, and commit to becoming an agent of regeneration. At the risk now of sounding corny or like some sort of self-help guy, it is with sincerity that I say you are beautiful the way you are. You are enough. Get over yourself, forgive yourself and for the love of god let go of the stuff that’s been holding you back. For we need you right now. We need all of us to be agents of regeneration out there, as this is our last decade to make this right. Humanity has its next design assignment – Regenerating the World.

“

Accept the reality of where we are…and let go. Step bravely into this moment, and commit to becoming an agent of regeneration.

JASON F. McLENNAN is a highly sought out designer, consultant and thought leader. Prior to founding McLennan Design, Jason authored the Living Building Challenge – the most stringent and progressive green building program in existence, and founded the International Living Future Institute. He is the author of six books on Sustainability and Design including the Philosophy of Sustainable Design, “the bible for green building.”

FALL 2019

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11 Rob Picheta. CNN Travel. “People in India can See the Himalayas for the First Time in Decades as the Lockdown Eases Air Pollution.” April 2020. https:// www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdown-india-scli-intl/index.html 12 Neta C. Crawford. Brown University. “Costs of War: Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War.” Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, June 2019. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20 the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf 13 Neta C. Crawford. Brown University. “Costs of War: Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War.” Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, June 2019. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use,%20Climate%20Change%20and%20 the%20Costs%20of%20War%20Final.pdf 14 New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. “Practical Actions for Plastic Shopping Bags.” 2016. https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/~/media/EPA/ Corporate%20Site/resources/waste/160143plastic-shopping-bags-options.ashx 15 New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. “Practical Actions for Plastic Shopping Bags.” 2016. https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/~/media/EPA/ Corporate%20Site/resources/waste/160143plastic-shopping-bags-options.ashx 16 Guadalupe Medina. The Globe. “Plastic Continues to Affect the Environment.” March 2019. https://www.globeslcc.com/2019/03/27/plastic-pollution-effects-recycling/ 17 New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. “Practical Actions for Plastic Shopping Bags.” 2016. https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/~/media/EPA/Corporate%20Site/resources/waste/160143plastic-shopping-bags-options.ashx 18 Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck, and Kara Lavender Law. American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Production, Use, and Fate of all Plastics ever Made.” Science Advances, July 2017. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782 19 New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. “Practical Actions for Plastic Shopping Bags.” 2016. https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/~/media/EPA/ Corporate%20Site/resources/waste/160143plastic-shopping-bags-options.ashx 20 Harish Bisht and Sanjay Tammaji Kulkarni. European Patent Office. “A Process for the Preparation of Polyethylene Terephthalate.” https://patents.google. com/patent/EP1535946A1 21 World Wide Fund for Nature. “Plastic in Our Oceans is Killing Marine Mammals.” October 2018. https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/plastic-in-our-oceans-is-killing-marine-mammals#:~:text=Globally%2C%20100%2C000%20marine%20mammals%20die,in%20plastic%2Dbased%20fishing%20

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gear.

22 International Living Future Institute. “The Red List.” https://living-future.org/declare/declare-about/red-list/ 23 Bartees Cox. Quartz. “No Coincidence: Environmental Racism has Left Black Americans Three Times More Likely to Die from Pollution.” March 2018. https://qz.com/1226984/environmental-racism-has-left-black-americans-three-times-more-likely-to-die-from-pollution/ 24 American Lung Association. “Disparities in the Impact of Air Pollution.” April 2020. https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/who-is-at-risk/disparitieshttps://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/who-is-at-risk/disparities 25 Vann R. Newkirk II. The Atlantic. “Trump’s EPA Concludes Environmental Racism is Real.” February 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-trump-administration-finds-that-environmental-racism-is-real/554315/ 26 US Environmental Protection Agency. “Basic Information on PFAS.” December 2018. https://www.epa.gov/pfas/basic-information-pfas 27 Tasha Stoiber Ph.D. Environmental Working Group. “Study: Banned Since 2004, Toxic Flame Retardants Persist in US Newborns.” July 2017. https:// www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2017/07/study-banned-2004-toxic-flame-retardants-persist-us-newborns 28 Aylin Woodward. Business Insider. “Last Year, 40% of Honey-Bee Colonies in the US Died.” June 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/insects-dying-off-sign-of-6th-mass-extinction-2019-2 29 Tom Philpott. Grist. “Our Other Addiction: The Tricky Geopolitics of Nitrogen Fertilizer.” February 2010. https://grist.org/article/2010-02-11-tracking-u-s-farmers-supply-nitrogen-fertilizer/ 30 Damian Carrington. The Guardian. “Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Event Underway, Scientists Warn.” July 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn 31 Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. “Biological Annihilation Via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines.” July 2017. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089 32 World Wide Fund for Nature. “Deforestation and Forest Degradation.” 2020. https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation 33 Damian Carrington. The Guardian. “Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Event Underway, Scientists Warn.” July 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn 34 Half Earth Project. “Discover Half Earth Project.” 2020. https://www.half-earthproject.org/discover-half-earth/#why-half 35 Conservation International. “Biodiversity Hotspots.” 2020. https://www.conservation.org/priorities/biodiversity-hotspots 36 European Commission. “EU Biodiversity Standard for 2030.” https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal/actions-being-taken-eu/eu-biodiversity-strategy-2030_en 37 Betsy Mason. National Geographic. “All Over the Map: Maps Show Humans’ Growing Impact on the Planet.” August 2016. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/08/human-footprint-map-ecological-impact/ 38 Mike Wall. Space.com. “Terraform Earth? Rewilding the Planet Could Help us Plan for Mars Colonization.” September 2019. https://www.space.com/ terraforming-earth-practice-for-mars-jonathon-keats-art.html 39 Project Drawdown. “Conservation Agriculture.” https://drawdown.org/solutions/conservation-agriculture 40 Project Drawdown. “Regenerative Annual Cropping. https://drawdown.org/solutions/regenerative-annual-cropping 41 Trillion Trees. “The Trillion Trees Vision: One Trillion Trees Re-Grown, Saved from Loss, and Better Protected Around the World by 2050.” https:// www.trilliontrees.org/about/the-vision 42 Isaac Chotiner. The New Yorker. “The Interwoven Threads of Inequality and Health.” April 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-coronavirus-and-the-interwoven-threads-of-inequality-and-health 43 Isaac Chotiner. The New Yorker. “The Interwoven Threads of Inequality and Health.” April 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-coronavirus-and-the-interwoven-threads-of-inequality-and-health

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ASPIRE

SUMMER 2020

ENVISIONING THE WORLD’S FIRST NET ZERO ARENA Climate Pledge Arena Sports venues are historically one of the most energy intensive building typologies on the planet. But with the help of McLennan Design, Climate Pledge Arena is on track to become the first Net Zero Carbon certified arena in the world by the International Living Future Institute. McLennan Design provided strategic sustainability and regenerative design consulting to set this facility on the path to become arguably the most sustainable sports venue ever. The roughly 800,000 sqft arena will host the new NHL Seattle team and will be completely carbon neutral for both operations and events. As the project progresses through construction and operations, McLennan Design will continue to coordinate, advise, and improve the performance of the facility through the formation of a Climate Pledge Council, co-led by Jason. F McLennan.

The vision is simple – to create the world’s first truly resilient, self-sustaining campus as a beacon of hope, leadership, and environmental stewardship. This lofty aspiration is grounded both in practical architectural solutions and an innovative educational curriculum.

Inspired by the site’s unique position in a truly wild and biodynamic part of the world, the redesign of the campus is focused on bringing out potential opportunities for discovery, creativity, and education.

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A world-class space inspiring others to make a world changing commitment.

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SUMMER 2020

The vision for Climate Pledge Arena targeted a wide range of regenerative design strategies and continues to evolve.

Several key components include: Carbon Neutral • No fossil fuel consumption in the arena for daily use. All facility mechanical systems, gas combustion engines, heating, dehumidification, and cooking have been converted to electric • Solar Panels on the Alaska Airlines Atrium and 1st Ave Garage combined with off-site supplementary renewable energy for 100% renewable energy power • Operate all events at zero carbon and purchase offsets including those for transportation • Preserving the historic roof and expanding underground reduces embodied energy use typical of new construction • Fully integrated transportation plan that includes subsidized public transportation, electric vehicle charging stations, and investment in the Seattle Center Monorail

Zero Single Use Plastics • The first arena and NHL Team to announce their intention to eliminate single use plastics within the venue starting in 2021 and become 100% free of single-use plastics by 2024.

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Water Conservation • “Rainwater to Ice” system that will harvest water off the roof, collect it into cisterns, and turn it into the “greenest” ice in the NHL. • ‘Make it Rain’ event where fans provide rainwater for use in making ice.

• Waterless urinals and ultra-efficient showers.

• On-site stormwater retention for landscaping.

• Water bottle filling stations throughout the arena.

Zero Waste • Targeting a 97%+ diversion rate for waste, which is considered ‘zero waste’ in the industry.

• Consumer education, beautiful and simple infographics, and on-site sorting along with other techniques will help the client reach this unprecedented level of performance.

• Extensive waste composting and recycling throughout the arena.

• Removing single use plastics from the arena by 2024.

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THE NHL’S 32ND CLUB. GIVEN LIFE BY 32,000 FANS. The Climate Pledge Area welcomes the newest NHL team, The Seattle Kraken!

“The Kraken is a name born of the fans. It was suggested and championed by the fans,” said Tod Leiweke, CEO of the Seattle Kraken. “We embarked on one of the most thorough naming processes in sports to make sure we got it right, to find the name that rings true. We wanted the name to connect to the powerful pull of nature here in the Pacific Northwest and resonate with the fervor for hockey in our city and region. And I promise we are going to deliver the most compelling, entertaining and unifying game experience for every fan who enters Climate Pledge Arena.”

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Sneak Peak What do Jason and his team work on when a worldwide pandemic strikes?

They bring their same radical thinking behind the Living Product Challenge to the world of ecommerce!

We are pleased to announce our new home

Instead, we want you to buy better quality

decor marketplace: Living Deep.

products. Products that are made right and last a good deal longer than what you typically

Living Deep is a professionally curated

find in the market. Nothing disposable.

collection of durable, beautiful products for

Nothing with a toxic legacy or poor labor

your home with a radical ethos: we want you

practices that don’t support your values.

to buy less stuff. Yes, you read that correctly.

Join us in this bold new experiment!

Living Deep is an online marketplace for ecologically and socially responsible goods that wants you to buy less stuff.

Sign up now at livingdeep.com to gain first access this Fall.

EDIFY

SUMMER 2020

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by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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ABOUT MCLENNAN DESIGN McLennan Design, one of the world’s leading multi-disciplinary regenerative design practices, focuses on deep green outcomes in the fields of architecture, planning, consulting, and product design. The firm uses an ecological perspective to drive design creativity and innovation, reimagining and redesigning for positive environmental and social impact.

Founded in 2013 by global sustainability leader and green design pioneer Jason F. McLennan and joined by partner Dale Duncan, the firm dedicates its practice to the creation of living buildings, netzero, and regenerative projects all over the world. As the founder and creator of many of the building industry’s leading programs including the Living Building Challenge and its related programs, McLennan and his design team bring substantial knowledge and unmatched expertise to the A/E industry. The firm’s diverse and interdisciplinary set of services makes for a culture of holistic solutions and big picture thinking.

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ABOUT JASON F. MCLENNAN Considered one of the world’s most influential individuals in the field of architecture and green building movement today, Jason is a highly sought out designer, consultant and thought leader.

The recipient of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize, the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design, he has been called the Steve Jobs of the green building industry, and a World Changer by GreenBiz magazine. In 2016, Jason was selected as the Award of Excellence winner for Engineering News Recordone of the only individuals in the architecture profession to have won the award in its 52-year history.

McLennan is the creator of the Living Building Challenge – the most stringent and progressive green building program in existence, as well as a primary author of the WELL Building Standard. He is the author of six books on Sustainability and Design used by thousands of practitioners each year, including The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. McLennan is both an Ashoka Fellow and Senior Fellow of the Design Future’s Council.

He has been selected by Yes! Magazine as one of 15 People Shaping the World and works closely with world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, leading NGOs, major universities, celebrities and development companies –all in the pursuit of a world that is socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. He serves as the Chairman of the International Living Future Institute and is the CEO of McLennan Design – his architectural and planning practice designing some of the world’s most advanced green buildings. McLennan’s work has been published in dozens of journals, magazines and newspapers around the world.

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mclennan-design.com