Refocusing the infrastructure conversation on people Duanne Andrade, opinion contributor
Infrastructure is more than just roads and bridges - it s the entirety of the built world that keeps our society running. Housing is a critical component of our infrastructure and key to providing the basic platform from which to succeed, yet many lack access to affordable, safe and healthy housing. In fact, there is a true affordable housing crisis. Old, dilapidated structures and even new ones cause disproportionate cost burdens meaning that 30 to 40 percent of incomes are spent on housing costs.
In addition, energy burdens are also disproportionately high for low to moderate income (LMI) residents, and structures often lack climate resilience upgrades to protect the lives and assets of those already income-constrained. It is time we spoke of affordable housing as being more than a low-rent or low-cost home, but rather a place where families can live comfortably, develop
Exclusive: Allbirds is interviewing banks for an I.P.O.
Silicon Valley’s favorite shoe brand is headed to Wall Street. Allbirds is interviewing banks over the next few weeks to help it make a market debut, DealBook hears. The direct-to-consumer company was last valued at around $1.7 billion.
“It’s the materials.” Allbirds was founded by the New Zealand soccer star Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger, a renewables expert. Its mantra is to “create better things in a better way,” and the company advertises that the merino wool in its shoes uses 60 percent less energy than typical synthetic materials. “One of the worst offenders of the environment from a consumer product standpoint is shoes,” Zwillinger told The Times in 2017. “It’s not the making; it’s the materials.” The brand’s flashy-but-logo-free shoes are popular among techies, celebrities (Leonardo DiCaprio is an investor) and Barack Obama. The company has raised more than $200 million since 2016.
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More than a decade after its first introduction, a national green bank bill is back before Congress, with much more funding than previous versions proposed over the past two years and a far greater chance to be passed into law, its backers say.
On Wednesday, Democrats in Congress reintroduced the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act. The bill would direct $100 billion to the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, a nonprofit entity tasked with making loans and investments into sectors of the economy that need to grow rapidly to meet the Biden-Harris administration’s aggressive decarbonization goals.
The bill’s proponents say that $100 billion could help leverage up to $500 billion more in private-sector lending and investment and create up to 4 million jobs over the next four years by targeting business sectors with carbon-reduction capacity but underdeveloped access to capital and credit, or gaps between proven technologies and the commercial structur
December 14, 2020
Australia is not exactly thought of as a global leader when it comes to climate policy, so much so, in fact, the country was recently excluded from the United Nations Climate Action Summit. It is perhaps most famous for being the only country to have passed and then repealed carbon-pricing legislation, as well as its enormous coal export trade with China. Australia and the United States face similar political hurdles in passing significant climate policy as large, fossil fuel-producing nations marked by seemingly endless culture wars over the issue. While pundits prefer to compare the United States to its more ambitious European counterparts, these are misleading. Instead, the Australian example offers a more realistic approach whose principles could be built upon and applied to an ambitious U.S. climate agenda that reaches across the aisle while leaving a lasting technological and institutional legacy.