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Solutions and Sustainability
Green Cities and the End of the Age of Oil
Richard Register, Common Ground
Over the past century, our cities have been shaped — literally — for the benefit of the automobile and oil industries. Today, with global oil reserves headed toward irreversible decline, we need to face the challenges of the imminent post-oil reality. Seizing foreign oil fields (then “spinning” the story to make a prophet of Orwell) will not solve our environmental problems. Building Green Cities for people, not cars, will.
In their controversial essay, “The Death of Environmentalism,” Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus claim that the environmental movement has worked its way into historical irrelevance. These writers suggest that “the greatest tragedy of the 1990s is that, in the end, the environmental community had still not come up with an inspiring vision, much less a legislative proposal, that the majority of Americans could get excited about.”
I disagree, not only with these two green movement morticians but also with some of their critics. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, has rightly scolded Shellenberger and Nordhaus for “failing to offer their own ideas,” a lapse that “rendered their report nihilistic – able to destroy but not create.” But what does Pope offer? The environmental movement, he says, “needs deeper, more robust, more sustained collaborations” and “a new economic order.” His action plan is focused on renewable energy. Does he see any alternative to tacking solar panels onto the past century’s exoskeleton of freeways, automobiles and sprawl? Not in his response. “As early as the Carter Administration,” Pope writes, “the Sierra Club sought an alliance with the United Auto Workers… to preserve and enhance the U.S. auto industry.” In their desire to deliver “what Mainstream America wants,” environmentalists discovered that people wanted cars. So the Sierra Club’s response has been to try and convince the auto industry that the environmental situation could be improved if Detroit simply built a “better” automobile. This won’t work and here’s why.
(June 2005 issue)
Richard Register has a website, Ecocity Builders, with many online articles on similar themes. Energy Bulletin re-published another article of his, Global Warming and the Elephant in the Living Room, which has links to an amazing talk he gave last year. -BA
Latest from Willits – Peak Oil preparedness
Claudia Reed, Willits News
As described in the article Past the Peak, Willits is the little town in Northern California leading the way in local solutions to Peak Oil. The local paper carried two stories on the town’s progress:
- City talks economic localization Wednesday
- Solar city and beyond: Speaker offers Sebastopol example, August 22
(August 2005)
Environment
Global warming brings earlier spring thaw to Great Lakes
New Scientist
The Great Lakes of the US, the planet’s largest concentration of fresh water, is thawing earlier each spring, according to an analysis of ice break-ups dating back to 1846.
Barbara Benson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues studied the timing of ice break-up on 61 lakes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and Ontario between 1975 and 2004, during which time the average global air temperature rose by 0.4 °C. The team gathered the dates from government databases, lake associations, newspapers and local residents.
(20 August 2005)
Will Climate Change Make Us Smarter?
Jamais Cascio, WorldChanging
It did before, at least according to a growing number of scientists specializing in the evolution of the human brain.
…It’s certain that the potential disasters such as global warming-triggered climate disruption, oil depletion, and pandemics such as human-transmissible H5N1 are making us rely more and more on effective tools of knowledge acquisition and communication. Sites like the Avian Flu wiki, the Oil Drum, and yes, even WorldChanging and myriad others we talk about here on a daily basis are important parts of a structure for understanding and learning how to deal with disruptive changes. Sensors, computers and networks allow us better ways to recognize, analyze and tell others about changes to the world around us. Simulations and modeling can aid in seeing future opportunities and risks, and databases help to make sure that we don’t forget them. Moreover, all of these tools are developing and advancing at a rate far exceeding biological evolution.
In short, we are improving our ability to communicate and cooperate, we’re just not doing it biologically.
I do think that climate change and the various other big challenges we will face in the months and years to come will make us smarter, even if our cranial size is unaffected. We will be forced to develop better ways of understanding what’s happening, looking for options, and cooperating on solutions. The ability to communicate clearly and completely will again be a species survival trait.
This is no reason to welcome global warming (or peak oil, or H5N1 pandemics…). It is, however, another reason for hope.
(20 August 2005)
Peat Bogs And Peak Oil –
I’m Sorry For Doubting,
Mr. President
Bill Henderson, Countercurrents
Thanks Mr. President – I’m so sorry I didn’t understand what you were trying to do.
I’m sorry Mr. Bush for doubting your capacity and integrity. It took the latest science reports about melting permafrost in Siberian and North American peat bogs and their release of potent supplies of greenhouse gas for me to clue in that you were actually trying to achieve a train wreck in order to forestall possible runaway global warming and other unavoidable global-scale problems associated with our ever expanding global economy.
(21 August 2005)
US senators: Global warming obvious in far north
Reuters via Breitbart
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Fresh from visits to Canada’s Yukon Territory and Alaska’s northernmost city, four U.S. senators said on Wednesday that signs of rising temperatures on Earth are obvious and they called on Congress to act.
“If you can go to the Native people and walk away with any doubt about what’s going on, I just think you’re not listening,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Hillary Clinton of New York told reporters in Anchorage that Inupiat Eskimo residents in Barrow, Alaska, have found their ancestral land and traditional lifestyle disrupted by disappearing sea ice, thawing permafrost, increased coastal erosion and changes to wildlife habitat.
(17 August 2005)
