Thirty stories up above the streets of Brooklyn Heights, Laurie Garrett emerges onto the roof of the historic building where she lives. The sun shines in a nearly cloudless sky. Several men follow her through the access door and then do what everyone who comes up here does first: They stare in amazement. Their eyes gaze out past the strange sculptures covered in black plastic, the randomly placed flowerboxes, the roaring air vents, and the curved metal railings. Garrett and her guests move about the roof, walking on stone tiles nestled in tar paper. They absorb the sweeping panoramic skyline: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the upper floors of New York's five boroughs-and then some.

The informal tour group gathers around Garrett as she talks about the neighborhood's significance. She is not only a resident here but also an award-winning journalist whose enthusiastic dedication to her building is matched by a deep understanding of the area's history. She motions below to the quiet dockside that was once crammed with clipper ships. A church to the north, its grounds punctuated by blossoming cherry trees, used to be a hub for the Underground Railroad. Jehovah's Witnesses have their world headquarters in the castle-like buildings next door.

The group reassembles on the roof's upper deck. A slight breeze tousles Garrett's short, wavy brown hair. She looks soft and familiar, sporting a black knit shirt and an AIDS ribbon pin in an African design. But she addresses her audience with an intensity that's somewhat at odds with her unassuming appearance. The group, which includes an architect, an engineer, and a sustainability expert, is here to figure out how the building might be renovated into something more environmentally friendly.

"There's a lot of pride in this neighborhood," Garrett tells them. "And there'll be a lot of pride in taking a new direction." That new direction is a green one-not the "Oh, wouldn't that be nice?" kind of green, but the "We'd better do this before things get worse" kind. In May, New York City published its first-ever carbon inventory, which included a surprising figure: It was found that 79% of all carbon emissions come from the city's buildings. And of those polluting buildings, nearly one-third are residential. In that light, Garrett sees her soaring apartment building, the St. George, as a proving ground. If she and the people she has gathered can transform this building, she firmly believes, then there is hope for the other 4,800-plusco-ops in New York City-and for the city itself.

A rich history
At night, if you stand way downtown on the wooden planks of the Fulton Ferry Landing, with the sparkling Manhattan skyline at your back, you can see the St. George's pale facade rising above the surrounding buildings. Its rooftop sculptures and cast-iron windows make it easily recognizable. As it happens, the St. George has gone through multiple incarnations since construction began on the original building complex in 1885. Named for a tavern that stood across the street back in the 1770s, the St. George Hotel (as it was originally known) rapidly became one of the world's largest. It boasted a luxurious interior and a 120-foot saltwater pool in the basement. Proximity to the docks and its posh decor are said to have made the St. George a mob headquarters during Prohibition. Eventual bankruptcy and then sale after sale led to its conversion into apartments in the 1980s. There are currently more than 270 units in the building, and its occupants range from the upper crust to retirees scraping by on Social Security checks.

The former grand hotel is now showing its age. Last winter, one of its three boilers stopped working; the other two need to be refurbished. And when it rains at the St. George, it pours. Tall green- and yellow-striped sculptures, meant to look like stylized papyrus sheaves, have occupied the roof since the 1930s. These decorative elements conduct water so readily that they've had to be covered entirely in black plastic, which itself is secured in place with roll after roll of duct tape. Even that doesn't stop the seepage, Garrett says. The waterproofing around the roof's perimeter doesn't help much, either. In an upper-floor hallway, water stains are visible on the peach-colored 1980s wallpaper. The top-floor apartments have sustained heavy water damage over the years.

The main stairwell on the southeast corner traps heat in summer, cold in winter. The ventilation system that makes such a racket on the roof is at least 30 years old. The cast-iron window frames that line each face of the St. George are original to the building-and so is much of the single-paned glass within them. Residents have taken different approaches to coping with the ancient windows, some installing sheets of plastic from the bottom of the windows to the ceiling in order to keep unwanted weather and temperatures at bay.

At first glance, though, it's hard to see the problem with Garrett's own apartment. She lives on the 25th floor-the highest floor of apartments, where there's an elevator to the roof-in part of what used to be the hotel's ballroom. In the entryway, the eye catches shiny stone, metal, and dark wood. The living room area opens up to the same stunning view as the one on the roof, only it's seen through 18-foot-high windows topped by brick arches. Garrett has placed colorful and striking modern artwork on her tall walls. A stairway with a metal railing leads up to her bedroom and office in a loft-like space enclosed in glass.

As we enjoy the view, Garrett points out another, thicker set of inner windows. During the summer, the extra panes create a pocket that keeps the hot air out. "In the winter, when the snow blows, I actually get snow drifts in between," she says. "I've had snow up to 3 feet high." She picks up a remote control and presses a button. There's a faint humming noise as a dark translucent shade comes down from the ceiling. The shade helps protect her and the artwork from harmful ultraviolet rays. (Even with the shade down, the sun is so intense here that Garrett says guests usually sleep with eye masks on.) The window work cost her $25,000-far less than the $75,000 estimate for replacing the windows entirely. "These were investments that I could personally afford to make," she says. "But what can most of my neighbors afford to do, much less the city? As individuals, I don't think we can pull off going green without help."

Passion and a pledge
The annual TED conference in Monterey, Calif., gathers some of the world's most interesting people, known and unknown. TED-which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design-has been called intellectual candy. Minds are blown by diverse presentations on such topics as disease, psychology, architecture, and dance. (Al Gore gave his global-warming slideshow at the conference before it became a movie.)

Last February, Laurie Garrett was at TED. She watched venture capitalist John Doerr give a presentation on energy technologies that took a personal turn. One night at dinner, he shared how his daughter had told him that his generation had made this environmental mess, so it was their responsibility to try to fix it. At that point Doerr-a shrewd businessman known for his role in the VC firm that funded Google, Amazon, and Genentech-began to cry. He closed with a plea for people and companies to go carbon-neutral and said that if anyone wanted to continue the discussion, they should come to a breakfast the following morning. (Even recounting Doerr's talk, Garrett's voice falters a little.) She arrived at the informal 7 a.m. breakfast Doerr had organized, not knowing what to expect.

Hundreds of people showed up, rapidly turning the gathering into something standing-room-only. One by one, attendees took to the microphone and made specific pledges. A restaurant owner promised to bring in more local produce; a cosmetics exec swore to find a way to sell makeup with less packaging. Garrett listened and thought about her career, her role as a journalist, her passion for the environment and the city she lives in. Even before this moment, she'd had plenty of time to think.

Garrett is a fifth-generation Angeleno. Growing up, she saw orchards and parkland cleared for subdivisions. There were stretches of time when the pollution was so thick that she and her neighbors nearly forgot about the nearby San Gabriel Mountains. "When I was a child," she remembers, "we had days when the smog was so intense that we weren't allowed to play outside. We had to lie down and try not to breathe too deeply." In junior high, she visited her aunt, uncle, and cousins near Stanford University. "They had all kinds of rules in the household around the environment that, as a kid coming from L.A., were completely foreign to me and quite remarkable," she says. Garrett watched her aunt soak vegetables to remove the pesticides. Her relatives composted all their food scraps and had live trees every Christmas that they planted afterward. An undergraduate degree in biology from UC Santa Cruz, she acknowledges, brought all these early experiences into sharp ecological focus.

In grad school at UC Berkeley, Garrett studied immunology and bacteriology and then began pursuing a Ph.D. Along the way, she was drawn increasingly toward science journalism and ultimately left her doctoral studies behind. She built her reputation on asking hard questions and on delving into public-health crises that would make most of us squirm. She won a Pulitzer in 1996 for her clearheaded Newsday coverage of Zaire's deadly Ebola virus outbreak. Her books The Coming Plague, about disease re-emergence, and Betrayal of Trust, which details how unprepared governments are for pandemic outbreaks, won wide acclaim. On Sept. 11, 2001, from the roof of her old apartment in Brooklyn Heights, she watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Her journalistic instincts kicked in, and she made her way to the Brooklyn Bridge, interviewing people she came across. Soon after, she settled into an unofficial "bodies" beat for Newsday, splitting her time between the city morgue and the search-and-rescue crew at the Javits Center. In 2004, she moved to her apartment in the St. George, hoping she'd get to watch as Ground Zero was rebuilt.

At the TED breakfast, while she contemplated her own pledge, Garrett heard a lot along the lines of "As CEO, I will..." and "For my own house, I will...." She thought about what she could reasonably commit to that would have an impact and still be achievable. When her turn came, she gave a little preamble about living in New York City and then, in true Garrett style, said, "I pledge to do my damnedest to turn my co-op green."

Landmark limitations
Garrett faces several sharp challenges in her quest. One of them, clearly, is financial. Co-op is short for co-operative, and it's a type of housing arrangement fairly unique to New York City. Co-ops began to appear decades ago, when the social struggles of the city in the '60s collided with financial desolation in the '70s. In a co-op, each tenant holds shares in a corporation that owns the whole building, and pays building maintenance fees in addition to individual mortgage payments. Also, there is no one landlord who runs the place; it's a group effort. When apartment buildings were going co-op long ago, tenants often bought their apartments at prices they could afford, with low payments in the beginning that, toward the end of the mortgage's term, some 20 or 30 years later, would swell greatly-thus the term balloon mortgage. Now, those balloon mortgages are coming due, which makes converting to a green building seem even more like a luxury for the St. George and every other co-op board considering it.

What's more, any changes to the St. George's exterior have to get a green light from the city's landmark overseers. Officially called the Landmarks Preservation Commission, this city agency is charged with identifying and preserving historical buildings, property, and objects. When the St. George was awarded landmark status in the late 1960s, it became protected-meaning, in the largest sense, that it can't be torn down. However, the St. George also has to continue looking the way it always did, especially since it can be seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. Why not just rip out those ugly rooftop sculptures? Well, the landmark commission says no. Fiberglass stand-ins? That would cost at least a million dollars, Garrett says. (The co-op board looked into it.) Photovoltaic cells? More-efficient windows? Sorry, the building has to look the same.

Planning the next steps
Back on the St. George's rooftop, the group that stands around Garrett is discussing how to navigate these dilemmas. Charles Calcagni, a purposeful architect with daSilva Architects and a member of the building's co-op board, talks about possible ways to improve airflow. Sam Rockwell, from City Councilmember David Yassky's office, thinks he can persuade the landmark commission to come up with a good solution for the leaky sculptures. Chris Luebkeman and Cameron Thomson, from the European engineering and design consultancy Arup, contemplate solar panels and awnings. They also think the saltwater aquifer that used to feed the giant hotel pool (long since drained and turned into a basketball court) could be tapped for electricity or even heat. Luebkeman-tall and trim, with a black fleece vest over his purple dress shirt-takes in the view one more time before everyone heads back to the stairwell. "Unbelievable!" he murmurs.

This is just the beginning for Garrett, the group, and the building. They have to move quickly, because the roof needs to be fixed, and so does that boiler. Back in the apartment, the discussion closes with a plan for an open design collaboration in the fall. The visitors exchange cards, shake hands, and head back to work.

All that time looking at the harbor, the patches of trees, and the black rooftops has made Garrett wonder about what she could do in her own building. In her living room, which is at the cruising altitude of a helicopter, she says, "The hardest thing is when you sit up here and you're in the crow's nest in the ship of the city. You see possibility in every direction. You're constantly thinking, 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if....'"

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