US Needs White House Climate Change Council to Protect Lives and Economy
By Warren Karlenzig, Common Current
With the Zika virus spreading in Florida, it’s timely to consider how we will prepare for our increasing real-time manifestations of climate change.
In Conversation: Communities and Infrastructure in a 100% Renewable World
By Daniel Lerch, Warren Karlenzig, Post Carbon Institute
The transition to 100% renewable energy raises profound questions for the future of our communities and infrastructure.
What Singapore Can Teach All Cities About Using Urban Green Infrastructure To Mitigate Megadroughts
By Warren Karlenzig, Sustainable Cities Collective
NASA's new report on the likelihood of megadrought in the Central and Western United States is a harsh yet timely wake-up call for cities.
Winds of Urban Change
By Warren Karlenzig, Almantas Samalavicius, Eurozine
To some, these emerging markets or behaviours may seem trivial or non-significant. But when viewed ten years from now, they will be recognized as having chipped away at the military-industrial complex.
US Climate Study: Cities Center of Risk, Opportunity
By Warren Karlenzig, Common Current
The National Climate Assessment findings mean that public policies will be of little value that are solely based on either past business or operating models, past (or even existing) resource or energy prices, as well as so-called “100-year” flood models.
The death of sprawl?
By Warren Karlenzig, Post Carbon Institute
The United States has reached an historic moment. The exurban development explosion that defined national growth during the past two decades has come to a screeching halt, according to the latest US Census figures. Only 1 of the 100 highest-growth US communities of 2006--all of them in sprawled areas--reported a significant population gain in 2011, prompting Yale economist Robert Shiller to predict suburbs overall may not see growth "during our lifetimes."
Japan’s Green Renewal? After the Disasters UN Tour
By Warren Karlenzig, Common Current
I've returned from a sobering United Nations-led tour of six tsunami-damaged communities and two radiation-impacted cities in Northern Japan. The obvious conclusion: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is forcing Japan to go green, including the launch of a new renewable energy national feed-in tariff that starts in July. Meanwhile the governor of Fukushima, Yuhei Sato, told us that renewables will be the "key factor" in the revival of his cesium-laden prefecture.
Death of Sprawl: Past and Future
By Warren Karlenzig, Common Current
Seems like my chapter "The Death of Sprawl" from The Post Carbon Reader is taking on a life of its own. Friday, Christopher Leinberger had an Op-ed in the New York Times, titled "Death of the Fringe Suburb," which restated concepts I had published (and sent Leinberger last year) namely, that the US mortgage crisis and recession were set off by upsidedown economics of sprawl speculation in US exurbs or "Boomburbs" and we can't ever do that again.