It's time for the United States and the Obama Administration to take a stand. Either this country will become a leader in sustainability technology, services and implementation, or it will languish forever behind the European Union, China, the Middle East, South Korea and other nations.
After a promising start by the Obama administration recognizing the importance of clean technologies, particularly clean energy and transportation, we are one year later paralyzed: Copenhagen was a qualified failure, Congress has abdicated passing climate change-related regulations, and the backdoor plan for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases is being challenged in Congress.
Part of the blame has to go to the White House. During President Obama's first 30 days, a raft of new programs under the Stimulus, about 11 percent of the $787 billion dollars, were announced that would benefit clean technology research and implementation.
By April the administration moved on to health care, leaving the green economy and climate change measures twisting in the wind. Instead of bolstering the effort with statistics, stories and demonstrations of why the world is already moving toward green as the biggest next-generation economic opportunity, the US green D-Day troops landed on the beach without air cover, supplies or a mission objective.
During late spring and summer last year, I spoke with numerous administration and Congressional officials. I proposed that the administration develop and release detailed figures on where green job growth was occurring. I also advised projecting those figures into a future of guaranteed clean technology dominance, with specific stories about where record numbers of new jobs were already being created:
Toledo, Ohio has 4 percent of its metro workforce (6,000 jobs!) engaged in clean technology production, at all levels including executive, research, marketing and labor. That's equivalent on the regional level to major industries that have picked up and left the Midwest and moved overseas.
California's green economy grew almost three times faster than the rest of its economy during 1995-2008. That job growth was in geographic regions all over the state, including wealthy urban coastal areas as well as in less prosperous and recession-ravaged inland regions.
The greater Boston metro area has become a hotbed for clean energy research and production through state programs and private sector collaboration, with MIT and Cambridge acting as important science and policy advancement centers.
Austin, Texas is a leading center for incubating renewable research, production and deployment, demonstrating public-private partnerships and academic collaboration, with the University of Texas.
Obviously, the officials did not understand that supporting "green jobs" means more than talking up the merits of each technology, which was their tact.
They told me, "We can gather and promote those statistics after the stimulus jobs are created." Or, "The White House staff is taking up every day with health care discussions--there is only one day per month for environmental discussions, so it's not enough time." (I couldn't believe at this day and age, they failed to frame the issues as "economic development" not "environmental" issues!)
The urgency of demonstrating how the clean technology economy is taking root in many Congressional districts and media markets is evident: people just need to see what these new opportunities are without having to understand the complex technologies themselves.
Only through such visceral stories, demonstrations and a few choice statistics will the American public public and media recognize that taking on the challenges of climate change and foreign oil dependency present untold opportunities for domestic jobs and market leadership.
Don't believe that this stuff is important? Let's look to China, which now leads the world market in solar and wind technologies. Or Europe, which just announced a Supergrid project, that will combine deployment and research capabilities from nine nations for a renewable energy grid across the Continent.
New green cities are being either planned, designed and built in China, South Korea, The Middle East and even India, based on new clean tech ecosystems combining renewable energy, with water and material conservation processes, along with information technologies. It's ironic that a US-based company like General Electric needs to base one of its largest clean technology research investment in Abu Dhabi, but that's the reality of our new economic era.
President Obama and Congress need to illustrate that we are falling behind in this race for the future of our national economy, planet and local livelihoods. They need to shine a solar spotlight on this new world that is emerging all around us, in our factories, universities and research laboratories to make them a recognized engine of our regional economies.
The president can look to a US city for inspiration. Seattle has set a goal of making itself North America's first carbon neutral city by 2030, which will require a Manhattan Project-type approach among local government, businesses, civic organizations and local experts. Only through well-researched shout-outs from the bully pulpit of the Presidency will such efforts capture and sustain the national imagination.
Our past has proven that once our nation is inspired, we all can move collectively toward a common goal: Let's use our existing and expected progress in sustainability to define a future of hope and economic regeneration.
What will we do post growth, post cheap energy, post resource abundance and post climate change? The Post Carbon Institute (PCI) convened its first meeting of Fellows this weekend in Berkeley to address these concerns. Many there and elsewhere have argued that these transformational changes are already becoming evident.
PCI Fellow Bill Rees, the co-originator of the Ecological Footprint, captured the mood of the group best when he said, "We have to adapt to the change rather then repress the change."
The Institute's Fellows were gathered by PCI from a wide variety of fields: energy, transportation, population, food/ agriculture, building and development, economics, social justice, education, urban issues, health, climate, biodiversity and water. The event marked a maiden face-to-face (and virtual) voyage to examine the brave new waters of the 21st century. About 25 of PCI's 29 Fellows participated.
PCI Fellows Retreat, David Brower Center, Berkeley (Post Carbon Institute photo)
Asher Miller, PCI's executive director set the table for the three-day event. "Facing such daunting issues, we can either: 1) pack up and go home; 2) be a witness to history; 3) save what we can, which I call the Noah's Ark approach; or 4) work as hard as we can, and go as big as can go. Collectively we can come up with one thing, or do lots of things--we don't know which one will bring the best results."
The group of Fellows up until this point has been focused on producing a book (cover pictured above) of essays and case studies that will be released by University of California Press with Watershed Media in July, The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century's Sustainability Crises.
The Berkeley retreat focused on developing connective tissue among Fellows through facilitated exercises, planning and presentations. Some highlights--or lowlights--as many of the participants (myself included) could be accused of being bearers of bad news:
Richard Heinberg, the Senior Fellow whose extensive work (The Party's Over, Blackout, Peak Everything) has provided a nexus for PCI while helping define "Peak Oil" thinking, has spoken to world leaders from Congress to European Parliament.
"I have nothing to show for all my presentation to political leaders," Heinberg said. "Anyone who questions the concept of growth is shunted off."
Erika Allen, Chicago manager for Growing Power, a national land trust that provides access to healthy local food in disadvantaged communities, explored a scenario where food supplies are cut off because of an energy supply disruption or other crisis. "We've been preparing around the principles of providing seven days of food for Chicago--what systems are in place to respond? We need to be able to grow food on concrete and on the tops of buildings."
The issue of sustainable agriculture, both urban and rural, was an overall emergent issue of the weekend, with talismanic Wes Jackson, founder and director of The Land Institute, providing an urgent view into a survival system that has been taken for granted.
"In the long run, soil is more important than oil," Jackson said, citing research that soil carbon concentrations in US have been halved since non-indigenous settlement, from 6 percent to 3 percent, because of poor conservation and industrial practices.
Grave consequences for climate-change influenced mass migrations were forecast by Brian Schwartz, a Johns Hopkins professor in public health. "Moving populations (because of climate change) will be very bad for society, the environment and health in every aspect."
Chris Martenson's The Crash Course presentation examined unsustainable levels of US debt, uncovering shocking new snapshots on the historic level of government and personal debt after a decade with zero job growth.
Martenson, a former corporate executive, later confessed that there are emerging opportunities in certain investments, job sectors and geographic areas. He was also optimistic about the can-do nature of Americans: "Give people something to do, and they'll put it together with joy and creativity, such as the Burning Man village."
Similarly, Rob Hopkins, the originator of the Transition Town movement, reported from the UK via Skype video (he gave up flying three years ago) that the effort to form locally organized community resilience around food, energy, construction and culture is rapidly multiplying in global locations. "It's spreading very, very fast, with new Transition Towns in Chile, Sweden, Canada, Italy and Australia."
"With resilience, we see an opportunity to take a shock and then make a step by the community in the right direction so it can advance itself," Hopkins said of the 300-plus transition initiatives. "Our role isn't to manage a lot of projects, but to support projects as they emerge."
Other Fellows presenting included author Bill McKibben (The End of Nature and 350.org), Zenobia Barlow, executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy, and Rees, a professor at the University of British Columbia. Joe Brewer, founder and director of communications strategy consultancy Cognitive Policy Works, also led sessions on communications and messaging.
The results of the event included a forthcoming mission statement that was co-authored by nine different groups. My group on cities also consisted of Johns Hopkins professor Schwartz, City University of New York professor (and former New York City green building standard originator) Hillary Brown, and transportation expert Anthony Perl, author of Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil.
We contributed concepts around "bioregionally grounded human communities" based on non-automotive transportation options, human-scaled neighborhoods and regionally produced sustainable food and energy.
Groups also prepared proposals for collaboration and post-event project action, including a Resiliency Preparedness Kit; a communications strategy and roll-out plan; a regional sustainable agriculture investment model for production, processing and urban distribution; and a PCI-informed community development prototype approach for both domestic (Oberlin, Ohio) and international (most likely India or China) communities.
"We need to foster experimentation, re-localization,and differentiation in our redundancies and behavior," said PCI executive director Miller. "Simple living can make us happier and can tap into the long history of humans as a species."
Tonight the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), a California-based think tank addressing sustainability issues associated with climate change, peaking resources and community resiliency, kicks off a three-day gathering with its Fellows (of which I am one) in Berkeley.
The Institute was founded in 2003, largely around the issue of peaking oil and energy supplies. Author Richard Heinberg (The Party's Over, Peak Everything) was the group's first Senior Fellow. Heinberg has been now joined by 28 other Fellows, and this is their first gathering.
From an initial focus on peaking energy resources and their potential impacts, PCI now addresses multiple areas and issues including climate change, consumption/ waste, communities, economies, ecology, education, energy, food/ agriculture, government, health, social justice, population, water, transportation.
Eighteen of those who are coming to Berkeley (five will join in remotely) to address how our government, society, communities and different industry sectors can prepare better for the system-based or "wicked problems" that climate change, peaking energy supplies and global recession present.
Brian Schwartz (public health expert, professor Johns Hopkins University)
Bill Rees (community resilience expert, author, University British Columbia)
David Hughes (energy expert, geoscientist for Canadian Geological Survey)
Warren Karlenzig (urban expert, author, president Common Current)
Other participants that will join in remotely include authors Michael Shuman, Josh Farley, Bill McKibben and Richard Douthwaite, Transition Town movement originator Rob Hopkins; Johns Hopkins' Cindy Parker.
Look for my report next week on the outcome of this historic gathering.
This weekend I volunteered to warn shopkeepers and
officials in my San Francisco suburb about dangerous urban flooding potential during
the next week.
Every Friday noon in San Anselmo the "flood siren"
(not disaster siren, mind) is tested. Within fifteen minutes of the last time
it blasted for real in 2005, at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday, three to four
feet of water was soon gushing down the main street (see photo above) into
homes and businesses. People here are acutely sensitive to heavy rain and the level
of the town's creek, since they are still trying to rise up from that cold watery blow
four years ago.
Up and down the California coast, metro areas
including Los Angeles and San Francisco, are experiencing a series of El
Nino-generated Pacific storms. Further inland, Phoenix will also take a big
hit. The forecasted 6-10 inches of rain over the next days will almost
certainly bring localized flooding and mudslides. Ocean storm swells will reach
20-30 feet on some parts of the coast by Thursday, lashing roads,
infrastructure and housing. (Update Jan. 22: the storms this week luckily did not flood San Anselmo, but did cause heavy rains, some flooding and infrastructure damage throughout the state and Arizona, while also reducing the region's drought).
NOAA 5-day precipitation forecast from 1/16/10: small purple circles in California represent areas expected to receive 8+ inches.
How much of this weather and its impacts can be
directly attributed to global climate change, I will not venture. The coastal
and tidal flooding that is expected in California, however, will be one of the hallmarks of a changing climate. Another effect will be drought---which
California and the Southwest have been experiencing for three years--the flip
side of climate change's growing precipitation impacts. Coastal
and desert urban areas in particular need to steel themselves for such a schizophrenic
future.
Leaving things up to "officials" to figure out disaster
plans is not recommended; true community resilience will require research, networking
and knowledge sharing within and outside one's normal sphere. In my case, I think
I was able to plug a few vital holes that may have been missed.
Most store owners in San
Anselmo (pop. 12,000) that I spoke with were savvy about imminent flood danger.
Based on their experience with the New Year's Eve flood of 2005, a few
shopkeepers had excellent information and resources: they referred me to online
creek-level readings ("anything over ten feet and I'm out of here," one man said), and email alerts that can be sent to email or phones from Nixle.com, a national information mass customization service that localizes updates on disasters, road
closures and crime.
Nixle, for instance, has newly
updated postings from the San Anselmo Police Department about potential hazards
for flooding and safeguards.
There's even a local AM radio (1610) station dedicated to disaster updates for
the area.
But none of that seemed to be
enough to really prepare people. One friend, a council member from the
neighboring town that was also flooded in 2005, did not know about the severity
of the forecast weather when I chanced to run into him at a musical performance
over the weekend. He had me send him the forecast links from NOAA
showing him exactly how much precip is expected to fall.
He emailed back, "We're trying to get our flood plain residents to batten down
the hatches. This should help."
Other small business owners
that I spoke to were new to town, including immigrants. Unlike long-time
business owners who told me they were warned by the police (or that had vivid mud-damaged
inventory and moldy wallboard memories), the new shopkeepers knew almost nothing
about flooding dangers or where to get the free sandbags.
Those who were around in
December 30, 2005, have learned that floodgates (above, white board) for each business offers the
best protection. In actuality, these are just rails installed on each side of entrance
door where a piece of plywood can be inserted as a barrier against the torrents
of water can come crashing against and under the front shop door (usually
glass). Gates work even better than sandbags, but sandbags will prevent the
glass doors from being smashed open.
The town and surrounding
communities, even the federal government, tried to take some larger-scale policy
actions after the 2005 flood, which caused almost $100 million in property damages
county-wide. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) developed a new local flood
risk map based on the 2005 event, and insurers offered policies that residents within
the areas were urged to purchase.
An extensive engineering study of the region's watershed is being made,
a $125-per-property flood fee narrowly passed a controversial vote, while creek debris clean-ups have become popular all-age volunteer events each fall before
the winter rainy season arrives.
Some houses have been rebuilt
and raised above the flood-prone region along San Anselmo/Corte Madera Creek. This
normally placid creek empties seven miles later into San Francisco Bay. High bay
tides back the creek up so that it can't empty into the bay quickly.
San Anselmo/ Corte Madera Creek Watershed: San Anselmo is in center, San Francisco Bay, on right
Unfortunately, it doesn't
take much time for San Anselmo/Corte Madera Creek (watershed in brown above) to back up from San Francisco
Bay and rise in the Marin communities lining its flood plain, since it is
surrounded by steep canyons that channel rainfall off nearby hills. Asphalt
parking lots, impermeable pavement and poorly planned development have also
increased the speed by which rainwater runs off into the creek. For instance,
when I checked creek levels online Sunday the 17th, the creek was 2.9 feet, but after heavy rains Sunday night
and Monday morning the creek was already over 6 feet. Flood stage is 11 feet (update 1/20/10: after heavy rain, the creek level went from 4 feet to 10 feet in matter of five hours, before receeding slightly) .
The irony of California's
winter storms is that they bring needed water to reservoirs and mountain snowpack,
promising to reduce or temporarily end the region's ongoing drought, which has
been costing the agriculture industry and some cities hundreds of millions in
lost revenue and in water purchases. Marin County last year was the first in
the Bay Area to approve desalination from San Francisco Bay water, despite energy and marine environmental impacts along with a hefty $100
million-plus price tag.
Not surprisingly, the state's residents have a
love-hate relationship with their winter weather. To make the affair even more
volatile, climate change may be swinging the status from drought to flood in a
matter of a few weeks.
Indeed, California's coastal
metros (along with the Gulf Coast, including Florida and New Orleans) may be
the first litmus test for how to adapt to the unpredictable excesses and
scarcities of a changing climate.
Chevron's Nigerian oil pipeline has been overtaken by the Movement for the Emancipation of Nigeria in the Niger Delta (above: AFP/File Photo). The group is obviously well-armed and trained. See the lead machine gunner supplied by ammunition/communications (left), and flanked by AK-47s and rocket launcher holders (left rear, right rear) scanning the horizon of Niger River, which has pipeline, production and transport facilities (Niger River Delta and Nigerian offshore oil areas are in yellow below).
The Niger Delta has been the source of about 2.5 to 3% of world oil supply and reserves, with Shell, Exxon, BP and others holding major delta and offshore concessions.
Multi-national oil companies have been open flaring oil wells 24 hours a day into the air, and causing extensive water pollution in the area once home to rich fishing and agriculture.
Thus the region is growing infamous for impacted civilian uprisings, peaceful and not so.
Said the governor of Nigeria's Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan: "...the
oil companies have polluted the air, the waters and soil....So, with this kind of situation, our people can no longer
fish or farm and so they can no longer feed themselves, the capacity to
do this is no longer there and when you cannot feed yourself, you are
hungry and when you are hungry, you get angry and when you are angry,
you get violent. So, it is a vicious cycle...We want to create a Delta
State without oil...We should be able to create a Nigerian economy
without oil, bring our youth up and train them to become farmers and
non-violent producers".
Nigerian novelist and television producer Ken Saro-Wiwa was hung after military trial in 1995, concerning demonstrations by the Ogoni group he founded, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).
Before the news of the Chevron pipeline takeover, oil markets were already heating up Friday to almost $83 a barrel, the highest range since October 2008, after hitting their historic peak of $147 a barrel in July 2008. Based on Nigeria and increased demand from China, this week could be be a harbinger for 2010 oil price trends.
The top ten sustainability stories of the past
decade was my last post.
What trends are likely the next ten years? One thing for sure, 2010 through
2019 will be one day be looked at as 1.) the turning point for addressing climate change
by using effective urban management strategies, or it will be remembered as 2.)
the time when we collectively fumbled the Big Blue Ball.
1.Bikes Culture 2.0
Time period: 2010-2019
Around the world, bicycles are becoming a
potent talisman of our urban post-carbon future. The city of
Copenhagen is making noise to replace the Little Mermaid of Hans Christian
Andersen fame
with something two-wheeled. Copenhagen residents use bikes for 37 percent of
all their transit. But
bikes in Europe represent more than utility; riding a bicycle with the Velib'
bikeshare program in Paris now easily competes (42 million registered users)
with taking a spring walk along the Seine. Bikesharing abounds in dozens of
European cities as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago, Chile. Look for North American burgs to continue their proliferation of bicycles-as-transit use
and bike lane expansion (NYC bicycle use is up 61% in two years).
Bikesharing on a large scale should follow new programs in Montreal,
Washington DC, and
Minneapolis.
Note to China: time to reclaim your status as the world's "bicycle kingdom."
Indoor bicycle parking will be
common in commercial garages and offices
even in businesses like cafes, bars (Gastalt Haus in Fairfax, California, is pictured above), stores and restaurants. On public
transportation bicycles will be allowed access at any time. In short, bicycles
and their riders will become legit, which will influence fashion, the economies
and the design of cities in particular. As musician-turned-bike-rack designer David
Byrne observed in his surprise 2009 bestseller Bicycle
Diaries, US metro areas in particular might have to be re-engineered
completely in some cases to accommodate this massive social transformation:
I try to explore some of these
towns--Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, Atlanta--by bike and it's frustrating. The
various parts of town are often "connected"--if one can call it that--mainly by
freeways, massive awe-inspiring concrete ribbons that usually kill the
neighborhoods they pass through, and often the ones they are supposed to
connect as well.
2.Mexico City, Climate Change, and the Future of Cities
Time Period: November-December
2010
Because "Nopenhagen" was a semi
bust, the Mexico City United Nations Climate Change conference is taking on
much bigger proportions than initially envisioned.
The UN COP15 Copenhagen conference resulted in no binding treaty status among
any of the 128 nations that attended for them to reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions. This year's late fall gathering in Mexico City is likely to set
national binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions. If enacted, these
targets will set the stage the coming entire decade's greenhouse gas reduction
strategies, including sub-national efforts at the regional and city level.
After disappointment in Copenhagen, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon lost no time in
preparing for Mexico City, calling on world leaders to sign a
legally binding carbon-emission reduction treaty
and to contribute to a multi-national fund for developing nations that will be
opened this month. Let's hope such a fund adequately addresses sustainable
urban development in Asian cities, whose currently unregulated hyper-growth is
expected to contribute more than half the world's greenhouse gas increases
between now and 2027.
3.The Rise of Cellulosic Biofuels
Time Period 2014-2019
Creating conventional biofuels
from corn, soybeans and palm oil as an alternative to petroleum-based gasoline
hit numerous roadblocks in the past decade. Carbon-sequestering rainforests in
Indonesia continue to be burned down for palm oil plantations; this unforeseen
consequence of biofuel demand caused the European Union to back off on large
orders of palm oil.
Another big unintended consequence emerged when crude oil prices rose to record
levels in 2007-2008. Biofuels, including corn-based ethanol created competition
for agricultural land, resulting in an increase in the cost of food staples.
Global corn prices, which biofuels caused to increase an estimated 15% to 27%
in 2007 alone, were especially impacted.
Cellulosic biofuels, in contrast,
offer the promise by the middle of the decade of creating a viable energy
source (one of many that will be needed) from waste products, such as wood waste, grasses, corn stalks, and other
non-food products. The trick will be to balance land use with energy production
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0602-ucsc_rogers_biofuels.html
so that unintended consequences, particularly burning rainforests and urban
food price riots
(Mexico City in 2007 pictured above) will be a thing of the past. Backed by research funding from the Obama Administration's
US Department of Energy (DOE), companies such as Mascoma Corporation
and Amyris Biotechnologies (with former Amyris founder Jay Keasling now at the helm of the DOE Joint Biosciences Energy Institute) are some
of the current leaders in the quest for a non-food biofuel.
4.The marriage of ICT and Green Cities
Time Period: 2013-2019
Called "the great digital
underbelly" of new and retrofitted sustainable cities by Gordon Feller of Urban
Age, green ICT (information and communications
technologies) holds promise for increasing the energy and resource efficiency of
most aspects of urban development. If these technologies can offset their
operating and production resource impacts (estimated to use 2-3 percent of
total industry energy used, but forecast to double by 2022),
the world could benefit from initial increased efficiencies in the 15-25
percent range (pdf). A crowded field that includes IBM, Cisco,
General Electric, Siemens and others is positioning to implement new ICT for
sustainability in cities, demonstrating applications at the pilot project level.
Cities with pilot or operating projects in green ICT include Amsterdam, San
Francisco, Masdar City (United Arab Emirates), Seoul, London, Singapore,
Beijing, New Delhi, Mumbai,
Stockholm and Oslo. The following are Green Smart City applications and
examples of companies involved:
traffic congestion monitoring and pricing
systems: IBM, Capita Group
water applications (leakage detection,
purification): IBM, Siemens
building applications (sense-and-respond
technologies to monitor temperature, light, humidity and occupancy): Johnson
Controls, Siemens, IBM
intelligent public transportation and logistics:
PwC, Samsung, Cisco
public shared offices with telepresence (pictured above): Cisco,
Hewlett-Packard
home and office smart appliances that can tie in
with smart grid energy applications: General Electric, AT&T, Whirlpool
smart grids: General Electric, Schneider
Electric, SAP, Oracle, ABB
data centers for cities: Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco
carbon inventories and carbon accounting:
Microsoft, Oracle
5.Implementation of Carbon Taxes
2010-2019
Exxon Mobil surprised many in
early 2009 when it called for a carbon tax as a way to address global climate
change. Whether the former denier of global climate change got religion remains
to be seen. Carbon taxes have been proposed for oil, natural gas and coal by
many as a way to adjust former so-called market "externalities," or impacts
beyond classically defined air pollution, which now includes greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
A handful of nations have some form of carbon tax, mostly in Scandinavia. On
the sub-national level, British Columbia and the San Francisco Bay
Area
recently proposed some form of the tax. Costs for carbon taxes can be
passed on to consumers directly, or they could be levied on industry, which
would likely cause manufacturing and operating costs to be wholly or partially
passed onto consumers.
Currently, the costs of producing
and using fossil fuels do not take into account the vast damage these
activities do to the earth's climate, which is gaining atmospheric carbon
dioxide concentrations at a rapid rate, endangering the stability of natural ecosystems, people's health, and the economy.
6.The First Big Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Drought
2010-1019
A major effort at climate change
adaptation is underway in Californiaas well as other urban areas that are
experiencing or are likely to feel the early effects from climate change.
Prolonged droughts consistent with the impacts of climate change are being seen
in Beijing, Southwestern North America (Mexico City/ LA, etc.) and urban areas in Southeast Australia.
As Maude Barlow (above) writes in her 2008
book Blue Covenant,
cities are becoming hotspots not only for suffering from the effects of water
shortages, but in many cases urbanization may be actually creating or exacerbating the severity
of drought:
Massive urbanization causes the
hydrologic cycle to not function correctly because rain needs to fall back on
green stuff -- vegetation and grass -- so that the process can repeat itself.
Or we are sending huge amounts of water from large watersheds to megacities and
some of them are 10 to 20 million people, and if those cities are on the ocean,
some of that water gets dumped into the ocean. It is not returned to the cycle.
Adaptation strategies will focus
on preparing government, business and citizens for extreme heat events,
wildfires (including urban/suburban wildfires), disease, and large-scale
migration of populations from impacted areas. Some of the efforts will involve
education and community outreach, such as Chicago's effortsto alert the elderly and handicapped to
imminent heat waves, or having people check on others that may be vulnerable
when conditions warrant. Other measures will require huge chunks of investments in
urban public and private infrastructure
to prevent coastal flooding and to store dwindling seasonal water supplies,
while health care professionals are likely to be first responders to new climate
change-boosted disease outbreaks, such as dengue fever.
The military is also likely to be added to the mix of climate change adaptation
actors.
7.End of Cheap Oil/ Onset of Fossil Fuel Shortages
2012-2019
Besides fresh water, oil is the
most threatened increasingly imported resource in developed economies. Energy shortages
or supply disruptions are expected to continue to develop because of political
acts, terrorism, warfare and natural disasters. The issue is not that the
reserves are "running out," but that getting at the remaining oil in a
cost-effective manner is becoming increasingly more difficult, as has been
outlined in multiple books by author Richard Heinberg (The Party's Over, Peak Everything) and others. As former Shell Oil CEO Jeroen van der Veer said in a 2008 email to
employees, "Shell estimates that after 2015, supplies of easy-to-access oil and
gas will no longer keep up with demand." Add the coming impacts of global climate change regulations to the scarce oil
equation (see Trends numbers 2 and 5 in this post), and oil will continue to be
an unpredictable flashpoint for the world economy. In 2007-2008, rapidly rising oil
prices helped trigger a deep world recession;
during the next decade oil may set off a chain of economic and civil events
that could be far more severe.
With market uncertainty for oil
prices and oil supplies, this new decade will witness the sunset of
exurban-style automotive dependant sprawl in the United States
and in many overseas copycat developments, particularly Asia. The overbuilt market
for large, totally car-dependent single family homes in outer suburbia is expected
by even some developers to not be viable for almost a decade, even if oil prices and supply stay relatively stable. A prolonged recurrence
of oil prices above $100-150 a barrel will drive a stake through the heart of
the exurban car-only model of real estate speculation, and will hit many other
elements (food, imported goods, oil-based products) of the Western economy.
8.Focus on Urban Agriculture and Foodsheds
Time Period: 2012-2019
As fuel prices rise and unexpected energy shortages
occur, food prices will rise rapidly, especially for food that must be
transported long distances via airplanes, stored and processed. The alternative
is greater local and regional food production in and around cities. Existing
cities in Latin America (Havana, Cuba--pictured above--and Quito, Ecuador), Africa (Dar Es Salam, Tanzania; Kampala,
Uganda) and Asia (Seoul, South Korea), have produced significant
quantities of produce or aquaculture within their city limits.
Cities in North America that have maintained or are building or rebuilding
strong regional food networks include Seattle, Honolulu, Boston, Philadelphia
and San Francisco. Some newly planned cities are being engineered to produce
significant amounts of food that can also be used as a potential energy source
or rich compost nutrient. Examples include Masdar City in Abu Dhabi (United
Arab Emirates) and a supposedly scalable community plan called NewVista that is expected to be prototyped in the
United States and in Asia: both are innovating the production of food from
algae and other low-energy input nutrient sources.
9.Resiliency planning: cities, towns, homes
Time Period: 2010-2019
Resiliency is about making a
system or one's self stronger and more able to survive adversity. As the
previous items portend, there will no shortage of adversity during the coming
decade from climate change and energy supply instability. One of the major
social phenomena related to resiliency has been the emergence of the Transition
Town movement,
which has grown from a few villages in the United Kingdom to Barcelona, Spain, Boulder,
Colorado, and Sydney, Australia. The founder
of the phenomena, Rob Hopkins, also a Post Carbon Institute Fellow,
has used his transition model of Totnes, United Kingdom, to devise a global organizational playbook. The purpose of transition thinking is to prepare people for potential
shortages in global energy supplies and food caused by peaking oil and climate
change. In contrast to earlier "off-the-grid" movements of the 1970s,
Transition Towns can be located in urban neighborhoods as well as in the distant
boonies, and they focus on community-scaled solutions in transportation,
health, economics and people's livelihoods and personal skills. Tactics of
local groups vary widely, with events ranging from the familiar--clothing swaps
and art festivals to the seemingly more obscure--"unleashings,"--to
policy-laden activities, such as launching a long-term (15-20 years) "Energy Descent
Action Plan." The emphasis is on understanding and using collective community
resources, including knowledge and skills, that people have in their own sphere
of influence, versus waiting for top-down government decrees.
10.SustainabilityMovie/ Novel /Art/ Song
Time Period
2010-2019
There has yet to be a significant
work of popular art that I am aware of that captures the modern systemic
aspirations of sustainability. In terms of modern life, some works have focused
on environmental destruction, (Marvin Gaye's song "Mercy Mercy Me"), the terror
of abrupt climate change (the unsuccessful 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow),the international political subterfuge behind
oil (2005's Syrianawith George Clooney, one of my personal favorite films), and the destruction of natural
systems (Dr. Seuss's 1971 book The Lorax) or cultural/species depletion (James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar), but no novel, song, painting or movie has come
close to depicting a fictional world of what holistic sustainability solutions
might look like, even feel like. Any suggestions of existing or planned works
that would fit the bill?
Odds are that breakthrough art successfully depicting sustainability will feature or draw upon urban culture in some fashion. After all, cities have gone from being perceived as the opposite of what the "environmental movement" has been trying to save, to the epicenter of this new revolution that is launching in a city or neighborhood near you.
It's the end of the decade 2000-2009, and there has been
progress as well as potential disaster for sustainability. In chronological
order, I've chosen these ten stories to show a range of relevant global and national
issues and events on climate, business, government, media, design, technology,
language and demographics. Some of the entries are pegged to an exact date, while
others cover a time period.
The first entry, climate change is impacting all aspects of
sustainability thought, planning and action.
1.Terror
of the Decade: Global Climate Change Confirmed by...Climate, IPCC, Heads of State
Time Period: 2000-2009
The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that we humans are
changing the earth's climate in ways in which millions are beginning to regret.
Ten of the hottest years on record globally have been recorded in the ten years
since
1997. Some of the impacts: rising overall sea levels from melting polar ice are
already damaging low-lying areas in Bangladesh, India, Egypt and China, and
threatening the very existence of island nations. More intense hurricanes (Katrina
killed more than 1,300 in 2006
and helped shut down the oil and gas refining sector in the Gulf Coast);
droughts, heat (the Europe heat event of 2003 caused more than 35,000 deaths) and wildfires (Australia's Melbourne-area deadly firestorm of 2009 exploded
during one of the hottest periods ever recorded Down under, dramatizing the
ravishes of an ongoing 8-year drought).
So what if these are chance events, unrelated to man's
impact on the globe's climate? That's a fair question and an outside
possibility, but odds are that these extreme events were at least partially due
to the rising global concentration of CO2, which is now at about 390 parts per
million (ppm), up from 315 ppm in the late 1950s.The real threat is that things will get much
worse (heat waves, droughts, floods, depletion of glaciers and water supplies,
agriculture and fisheries disruption) if our global greenhouse gases continue
to increase. Human-based greenhouse gas emissions increased 70% between 1970
and 2004, according to the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, also known
as the IPCC). The watershed IPCC Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 developed by 2,500 of the world's leading climate
scientists, put the likelihood at more than 90 percent that the global
temperature increase of .74 Celsius between 1906 and 2005 has been caused by
human greenhouse gas emissions. How often have 2,500 scientists agreed on
anything? The landmark 2007 "Stern Review on the Economic of Climate Change," by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern,
estimates that global climate change could negatively impact the world
economy annually at 5-20 percent Gross Domestic Product, while Stern estimated
that the annual costs of reducing the risks of global climate
change are estimated to be about 1 percent of world GDP.
Unfortunately, the UN COP-15 conference in Copenhagen ended with a whimper, producing only a non-binding agreement
to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above
pre-industrialized temperature levels. Follow-up actions, including a potential binding
treaty, will set the agenda for the next decade and beyond.
2.Word: Sustainability
Time
Period: 2000-2009
The use of the term
"sustainability" itself has been a major surprise this past decade. In 2000,
only a few policy wonks and academics used the word, traditionally defined as "meeting
present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their needs."Now the
public (maybe even more than the media) is gleaning that "sustainability"
differs considerably from "environmentalism" as it is based on planning for an
uncertain future based on economics, culture, resources and technology.
As the current decade closes many are searching for a
term that could replace "sustainability," claimed to be almost meaningless now
because it has been hijacked by greenwashing corporate marketing campaigns (I
bet some such ads pop up next to this post somewhere in future digital
ether!)."Resilience" is currently gaining traction, but we'll perhaps need another decade to see if the "s-word" gets dethroned.
3.Standards:
LEED Green Buildings
Date: March 2000
The US Green Building Council
formally released its Leadership in Energy and Environment Design building standards
(LEED)
full Green Building Rating system 2.0 in March 2000. The impact on the nation's
building and construction industry over the next ten years has been wildly
popular and transformational on numerous levels. The number of LEED-certified
or registered buildings increased from 10,000 in 2007 to 20,000 by the
beginning of 2009.Providing a system-based measurable standard of what "green" means is useful
for policy, benchmarking and new market development. The LEED ratings, for instance, were
integral to my ability to develop an overall sustainability benchmarking of US
cities starting in 2005 (which can found in my book How Green is Your City?). Critics
have assailed LEED for providing standards in certification that do not reflect
actual performance in energy efficiency. Nevertheless, LEED standards, are now being positioned for international
markets (in competition with Europe's BREE-AM and China's
emerging Three Star standard),and they continue to be a powerful
teaching tool, not to mention an industry onto themselves. Today's savvy urban
planner, construction manager or architect must possess the LEED-AP,
"Accredited Professional" tagline on their business card. In addition to new
commercial building construction, LEED is now being applied to homes, existing
buildings, schools, neighborhoods and may even extend to cities, under the LEED for
Neighborhood Development standard
that was launched in 2009.
The next challenges for green building standards will be
rating life-cycle impacts (carbon, water, scarce resources) of construction processes and material, while integrating measures of building performance--how much buildings actually save energy or water once they are occupied.
4.Product:
The Toyota Prius
Date: July 2000
Back in the 1990s, Toyota
Motor Corporation CEO Katsuaki Watanbe helped birth the "G-21," later known as
the Prius, when he decided that middle-class consumers wanted a car that used
new motor innovations to be fuel-efficient. The Prius hybrid gas-electric car
was introduced in the United States in July 2000. It quickly became a Hollywood status symbol after Leonardo DiCaprio bought one
in 2001, and he and other stars such as Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart
(remember her?) began showing up at the 2003 Oscar ceremonies not in
chauffeured limos, but behind the wheel or driven in their own Priuses. By the
decade's peak sales year of 2007, the Toyota Prius had sold 180,000 units in the
United States.These cars get 40-50 miles per gallon but
perhaps even more importantly provide a meter showing real-time and historic
fuel efficiency; self-monitoring feedback is one of the greatest ways of
changing behavior to reduce energy use.
Plug-in electric models of the Prius will begin to be released on test basis in
2010, in a challenge to the introduction of GM's Chevy Volt. Plug-ins may
create fuel efficiencies that can truly reduce carbon emissions and oil
dependency, getting from 51 to 100+ miles per gallon. One problem with electric
cars or plug-in hybrid electrics is that their true sustainability impact depends on exactly
how the electricity they use is produced at the power plant: renewables or
dirty coal? In parts of the United States that continue to burn large amounts
of coal to generate electricity (Southeast, lower Midwest and Plains states),
driving an electric car does little or nothing to reduce a person's overall
carbon footprint when compared to gas-burning cars. When you consider cars and
health, social, land use and material life-cycle impacts, driving less is better for people's
fitness, the
environment and the planet.
5.Corporate
Story. Wal-Mart Embarks on a "Green" Path
Time
Period: 2004-2005
I must admit, I was a skeptic when I first heard of
Wal-Mart's plan to go green in 2004 from Jib Ellison, founder of Blue Skye
Consulting, one
of the major collaborative forces behind Wal-Mart's transformation. Wal-Mart,
at that point the largest company in the world (it's now number 3), had
been known for its ruthless management style, questionable labor practices, and
for helping put locally owned stores in towns across the country out of
business. Ellison had met with Wal-Mart's then-CEO Lee Scott at the behest of
Conservation International's CEO Peter Seligman, and
Scott decided upon a serious campaign to make the company more resource and
energy efficient. Since that meeting, the company has been streamlining its
transportation fleet, buildings and some products to be less environmentally
destructive. The company is now targeting its supply chain, which is primarily
in China, in a loosely defined, greening protocol.
The impact of Wal-Mart going green helped awaken the
nation's business leaders to the potential of making their own operations and
supply chains energy and resource efficient, (just sounds like good business to me). Wal-Mart announced earlier in 2009 that it would require
manufacturers to calculate and disclose the full environmental costs of
ingredients and processes on product labels sometime in the next five years.
Suppliers, formerly isolated or little regulated, are now assessing their
operations in a way they never would have without the threat of greater
scrutiny from their biggest customer.
6.Regulations: California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006
(AB 32)
Time
Period: 2005-2006
When California Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger made the declaration in June 2005 that, "I say the debate is
over (on climate change),"
many were still heatedly arguing that climate change needed more studies before
action was taken. The Governor and the California Legislature pressed ahead in
2006 to sign the nation's first major climate change mitigation legislation,
known as AB 32 . Now AB 32 will soon be implemented across industries and even in local
communities through follow-up legislation such as the regulation known
as SB 375, the nation's first statewide
regulatory attempt to limit suburban and exurban sprawl. Meanwhile, opponents
of AB 32, are gearing up for 2010 gubernatorial elections, claiming AB 32 will
cost the state $143 billion in auction taxes alone. Whatever happens
next, California is being looked on by the Obama Administration and world
leaders as the pace setter in climate change mitigation with its aggressive automotive
fuel standards,
green building standards and AB 32's goal of reducing
greenhouse gases 80% over 1990 levels by 2050.
7.Film: An Inconvenient Truth
Date:May, 2006
Released in Summer 2006 at the Sundance Film Festival, An Inconvenient Truth made the debate on
climate change public. The documentary, which was actually just a series of
lectures and slideshows that former Vice President Al Gore was giving around
the world, hit a nerve. Despite "action scenes" that consisted of Gore either
1.) riding up elevators or 2.) riding down escalators, the film created a major
public buzz and introduced the subject of climate change to popular culture. An
Inconvenient Truth received an Academy Award in 2007 for Best Documentary
and went on to set records for box office revenues in its category. An Inconvenient Truth offered very few
solutions, suggesting compact fluorescent bulbs and little more. This critical
learning opportunity was finally addressed when Gore released a follow-up book
in 2009, A Plan to Solve the Climate
Crisis.
8.Book:
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Date:
May, 2006
Michael Pollan's 2006 book TheOmnivore's Dilemma made clear the benefits of sustainable
agriculture and food production, and even foraging or killing your own food:
it's healthier for people, animals, farmers, the land and nature. The ongoing
popularity of this book has helped create a demand for sustainably raised food
that has out-paced supply. The Omnivore's
Dilemma patiently outlined what is wrong with industrial agriculture and
livestock production, where highly subsidized ingredients such as high fructose
corn syrup have become a surplus commodity to be forced upon products or
animals in order to reduce the price of ingredients, without regard to health
(diabetes, reduced nutrition). I had the good fortune of meeting Angelo Garro,
the Italian forager, now based in Northern California who was profiled in the
last half of the book. As we traded notes on wild huckleberry picking one
afternoon at a friend's orchard party, he was pulling off some strips of meat from a boiled
carcass. When the sun went down most were unknowingly eating a jack rabbit that
Angelo had shot in the orchard a few hours before--it had made its way into a
delicious bolognese pasta sauce.
9.Design:
Masdar City, First Planned Net-Zero Carbon City
Time Period: 2006-2017
Masdar will be a 50,000-person city based on applied sustainability
research and technology that is being developed in Abu Dhabi, United
Arab Emirates. While other cities have been planned to be net-zero carbon
(Dongtan, China, which is not being developed because of local corruption and
other issues), Masdar
has been one of the few net-zeros that appear to be proceeding as planned. With
financial partners Credit Suisse, Siemens and General Electric, Masdar is also
backed by the city-state of Abu Dhabi, as well as technology partners from the
UK and Spain. The complex is being used for cutting-edge research in: renewable
energy (including dozens of active and passive solar and wind technologies), water
conservation technologies that can distill drinking water from ambient moisture
both indoors (sweat) and outdoors (dew), as well as local urban food production
schemes. In fall 2009, the Masdar Institute of Technology opened, in conjunction with
MIT, where students get degrees in engineering,material sciences, IT, water and the
environment, all with a relationship to the real world demonstration projects
taking root in the city that in Arabic means "the source."
10.Future
Trend: Mega-growth of Unregulated Asian Cities + Mega Drought
Time
Period: 2009-2030
Between now and 2027 Asian Cities will account for more
than half of the world's greenhouse gas increases,
according to a study by the Asian Development Bank.
From Mumbai to Beijing, cities will add a projected 1.8 billion people over the next two
decades; they are almost entirely unregulated in their growth, carbon
management and environmental impacts, despite some new siloed attempts to
manage their industries, power production and energy efficiency. The daunting
challenge is that no regulatory structure exists to monitor this collection of Asian mega-cities,
despite the fact that many of these cities has or will have populations of 10-20 million individuals. This megagrowth began
around the beginning of the 00's, when Asian urban population was at 1.4
billion. Asia is projected to have about 3 billion urbanites by 2030.
Water is the first epic Asian city resource
crisis. The Tibetan Plateau, source of most of the region's major
sources of fresh water (including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Ganges,
Irrawaddy and the Indus rivers) has been experiencing a seven percent loss of
glaciers on an annual basis, according to a report released last week (pdf) at the
Copenhagen climate conference.
Beijing has been hit especially
hard by a ten-year drought (pdf): the city of 17 million has enough water for only 14
million. Beijing has been forced to procure
water from surrounding agricultural regions and rapidly diminishing groundwater, while some cities in India have
completely run out of water during periods of drought over the past decade.
Warren Karlenzig is president of Common
Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy
consultancy. He is a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
Warren Karlenzig
Common Current founder and president, has
worked with the federal government; the nation of South Korea ("New
Cities Green Metrics"); The European Union ("Green and Connected Cities
Initiative"); the State of California ("Comprehensive Recycling
Communities" and "Sustainable Community Plans"); major cities; and the
world's largest corporations developing policy, strategy, financing and
critical operational capacities for 20 years. Read more here.
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