Are you an architect, urban planners, designer, ecologist or student? If so, Brad Pitt, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Global Green (a group Citizen Hunters know about) want you to come up with a creative yet practical vision for New Orleans. Participants will be asked to put forth designs using green principles for the reconstruction of several New Orleans neighborhoods.
"Slowing global warming doesn't have to be an intangible notion," Matt Petersen, a good friend and director of Global Green, told me, "we can also reduce energy bills for low-income families, help communities rebuild with clean jobs, and reduce the threats to public health with green building."
Go to Globalgreen.org today and put those great ideas into action! Wouldn't it be great if a Citizen Hunter won? I will go as a water girl so I can meet Brad Pitt! help with this very important work!
Flavia you are far too classy for Brad Pitt! I'm sure there are many other handsome intelligent men for you to meet and discuss the latest green building trends than that greasy troglodyte. Besides, from what I can tell from the latest Hollywood rags, he seems to prefer slutty homewrecking types.
Posted by: Jennifer A. at April 26, 2006 05:21 PMWell planning should start with integrating spaces in communities and decreasing reliance on vehciles. That would be a start. If they are serious, there are many "green" planners that do this for a living.
Not to be skeptical, but have contests and pr gigs in a less urgent situation.
Firther, all the planning in the world would not have stopped the negligence and incompetence on the levee system by the ACE. Why not a contest to see why tons of money can be spent on everything BUT sensitive critical infrastructure in this country?
I guess you can never please some people. As the old hippie saying "Think Globally Act Locally" goes, so should we. Furthermore, I think its high time we get past the finger pointing and get down to the business of rebuilding. Who knows...this contest just might discover a Howark Roark.
Posted by: Donald Key at April 27, 2006 04:39 PMGood grief. Do any of you left wingers realize how ridiculous associating yourselves with a former communist dictator makes you look?
Posted by: Dan at April 28, 2006 09:04 AMHey, Dan, exactly Mikhail Gorbachev is a FORMER communist dictator. He has learned from his mistakes and is trying to make the future a better place!
Posted by: Leah at April 28, 2006 10:27 AMI'm not so sure about looking ridiculous. President Reagan associated himself with Mr. Gorbachev pretty closely to get some work done. It's amazing what people can do when they work together...
From the Washington Post:
...His first meeting with Reagan in Geneva in November 1985, "confirmed the correctness of our assessment of the situation," he continued. This was the first Soviet-American summit in seven years, and it did not begin well. After the first session, he recounted, his comrades asked for his impressions of Reagan. "He's a real dinosaur," Gorbachev quoted himself as saying. "And then I learned," he added, "there was a leak from the American delegation, that . . . Reagan [described] Gorbachev as 'a die-hard Communist.' "
But just a day and a half later, the two men signed an agreement that stated their mutual conviction that nuclear war was unthinkable. They initiated a batch of new cooperative enterprises intended to improve relations. "That was the beginning of hope," Gorbachev said.
At subsequent meetings at Reykjavik the next year, in Washington in 1987 and in Moscow in 1988, relations got better and better. By the time he came to Moscow in 1988, Gorbachev recalled with evident satisfaction, Reagan had changed his views.
"An American reporter asked President Reagan, while we were taking a walk . . . 'Mr. President, do you still regard the Soviet Union as an evil empire?' And Reagan said no."
Staff writer David E. Hoffman contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company