ABOUT

At least in my own circles, there seems to be a great sense of malaise about our ability to do anything about the climate crisis. What is different about this moment is that it is actually now possible to radically reduce one’s carbon footprint, and lead an even more thriving, productive, and happy life.

The intent of this website is to provide straightforward information and a roadmap for people who want to do something about climate change. I have long been struck by the lack of knowledge of individual sources of carbon emissions, and how they can be avoided. A huge cohort of the developed world consider climate change to be the number one crisis confronting humanity today, and yet do almost nothing about it.

The reality is that a network of advocacy and professional communities have been striving for decades to craft an array of sustainability and climate positive options, which are now ready for prime time. Taken together, they can enable mainstream people to live climate positive lives. These communities include:

  • Energy efficiency and green building

  • Solar and renewable energy

  • Green and micromobility

  • Vegan, vegetarian, and organic

  • Radical localism and community

  • Radical simplicity

  • Mindfulness

Even though we are living in the middle of great turmoil in the United States, it is critical that those of us who can act, do act—as a collective we can be a vanguard of action, forming a virtuous cycle of mainstreaming and normalizing, which serves to improve the market and know-how, reducing costs. I also believe it is critical to recognize that, in many cases, government action has already accelerated effective climate solutions. In particular, these include:

  • Electric vehicles (via Federal tax credits)

  • Solar and wind (via Federal tax credits and local and state incentives, now broadly available to individuals through the Inflation Reduction Act)

  • Efficiency (via Energy Star and various local and state incentives)

  • Efficient buildings (via new construction energy codes)

This website is not about whether climate change is real. It is also not about the ethics of inaction. I am assuming that people are coming to this site with the conviction that we are in a slow moving yet massive crisis, and the understanding that the impacts will be borne by the future and those least able today to deal with it—thus, climate responsible.

Who am I?

I’m Brad Liljequist. I live in Seattle, Washington, USA with my wife. I grew up on Bainbridge Island, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. My undergraduate degree from Georgetown University was in history, and I have a Master’s in Environmental Policy from the University of Washington (I also had a very happy junior year abroad at University of St. Andrews studying divinity and medieval history). Professionally, I work at McKinstry, helping large organizations move their carbon footprint to zero.

Climate change has been a deep concern of mine for many decades, beginning during my graduate studies in the early 90s. An especially catalyzing moment for me was Al Gore’s somewhat forgotten 1992 book Earth in the Balance—far ahead of its time—which identified climate change as an existential threat to humanity. During my early career, my climate concern expressed itself through work in growth management planning and urban design which supported denser, more human- and transit-friendly development. 

Around 2000, I felt more profoundly called to climate action. I put hundreds of hours into campaigning for Al Gore in 2000; his loss, decided by a split Supreme Court, was yet another turning point for me. I committed myself to a more wholistic approach to climate solutions and learned from some of the early pioneers of the nascent green building network which had started in the 90s. At the City of Issaquah, I started one of the first municipal green building programs in the United States.

During this time, I first heard the term “zero energy”—referring to a building that was so efficient that solar on its roof could offset its annual energy use. Considering that at the time a 20% reduction in energy use and carbon emissions was a big deal, this concept was radical. It also seemed to have the ability to capture peoples’ imagination in a way that efficiency didn’t. In 2005, I took a sabbatical and visited the pioneering BedZED—a zero energy housing/office project in the London suburbs, as well as the rural zero energy Hockerton Housing Project—both far ahead of their time; I felt a powerful calling to come home and build a local example.

The culmination of this gestation was zHome, the first certified Zero Energy community in the United States, which I led development of. zHome was truly groundbreaking, reflected by its international news coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC 4, and the front page of the Seattle Times. If you’d like to learn more about zHome, check out my ten-part blog for Dwell magazine.

Through the certification process for zHome, I got to know the amazing community connected to the International Living Future Institute, which established the Living Building Challenge and many other deeply planet positive programs. From 2013 to 2018, I directed the Institute’s Energy, Carbon, and Climate programs, as well as launched the Living Community Challenge and created the Zero Carbon certification. I am particularly proud of the latter, which is now used by Microsoft, Google and others for their climate friendly new construction standard. While at ILFI, I also wrote The Power of Zero, a case study book about 19 zero energy buildings.

In 2018, I could feel a shift in climate solutions from the leading edge towards what I call the “progressive mainstream,” and was very grateful to join the remarkable company McKinstry as one of their zero-carbon leaders. McKinstry is the ninth largest mechanical/electrical/plumbing contractor in the United States, and delivers a number of climate solutions programs and innovations across our 26 offices nationwide. To give you a sense of the depth of McKinstry’s climate commitment, we self-developed Catalyst, now the home of Eastern Washington University’s STEM program as well as housing McKinstry’s Spokane office (I had the incredible opportunity to manage the wholistic zero-carbon strategy for this groundbreaking building). My current role is leading our deep decarbonization delivery for public sector clients (especially local governments and schools)—for example, this amazing decarbonization effort for the Salt Lake City School District.

Target audience

Setting this site up, I felt like there was a substantial tension between applicability of the information and span of audience. Even within developed countries there are a lot of physical differences—for example, density, associated availability of transit/goods/services, and construction types. North Americans have by far the largest carbon footprints per capita, and frankly this is the world I know. Rather than trying to provide global recommendations, I have focused on North Americans as the primary audience. But, of course, if you are from somewhere else and you find this helpful—wonderful!

Approach

This website has taken a couple of years of weekends, evenings, and dedicated weeks off to complete. I have done my best to review all major information sources, especially in the “why” section, and simply used my expertise and best judgement about which sources seemed best and/or most relevant.

I am a big fan of the law of diminishing returns as it applies to promoting climate action—I think a lot of folks are overwhelmed by the magnitude of change, or suffer from analysis paralysis and want to get a perfect plan before diving in. I think the priority is to just get going and make positive change.

Resources

I want to acknowledge three particular resources that this site draws heavily from.

Our World in Data is an amazing, fact-based resource based at Oxford University. I learn something every time I use it. They are dedicated to providing accurate, open-source information about an array of subjects, including climate change. I was really happy to see Hannah Ritchie, their climate data lead, recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine.

As discussed in the “What, Tier One” section, the Climate Cool calculator and associated research and tools from the University of California Berkeley CoolClimate Network are great. This team has been for some time, with a particularly strong legacy through the BECC conference. Climate action today stands on the shoulders of teams like ClimateCool.

Finally, for those of you who are heavily DIY and want to do house stuff yourself, Green Building Advisor is a great resource. You might consider signing up for GBA Prime, which has a lot of specialized content.

Thanks

Johanna Bjork is responsible for the wonderful design of this site. She also designed my book—every time someone picks it up, their first comment is about how beautiful it is!

I am grateful to my dear friend Michael Schut for spending many hours editing this website. Mike is a skilled editor, writer, and speaker, and is the editor/author of three fine books. Mike has influenced a lot of this website, particularly around simpler living.