Climate Change And Cities

This is a time when the credibility of national governments is at an all-time low. In the United States, Donald Trump openly denies climate science. Indeed, he has declared his intention to revive the coal industry and boost fracking, two very dangerous sources of environmental disruption. He is even musing about withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement Climate.

Here at home, things are not much better. While avoiding the harsh rhetoric of a climate-change denier, Justin Trudeau, by some feat of rhetorical legerdemain, insists that developing the tarsands is not incompatible with a cleaner environment. Such may sound good to the untutored mind, but for the critical thinker demanding specifics, the prime minister offers pretty thin gruel.

So where are we to look for real leadership? Even though they are at best very junior partners, because they have the most to lose as recent events have made very clear, cities may have far more ability to exert substantial influence on the climate change file than most people might think.

The late Benjamin Barber wrote a book, recently published, called Cool Cities: Urban Sovereignty and the Fix for Global Warming arguing that cities, not national governments, hold the key to real progress on the climate change file. An excerpt in The Guardian offers some of his thinking:

The list [of what municipalities can do] includes divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies; regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.

Barber cites the city of Oslo, which is pursuing a zero-emissions campaign, as an exemplar:

The city is applying the goal with particular efficiency to transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations are plentiful. The plan is to make Oslo the most electric vehicle-friendly city in the world – one in four new cars sold in Norway are electric – and a champion of green housing and architecture: its new opera house is set in a neighbourhood that gleams with green infrastructure.

And cities in Asia are embracing some surprising initiatives as well:

The greater Seoul region has a population of almost 25 million, and in 2015 it was ranked the continent’s most sustainable city. Seoul has made a massive investment in electric-powered buses. It already has the world’s third largest subway system, but its carbon fuel bus fleet of 120,000 vehicles has been a massive source of pollution. Current plans are to convert half this fleet to electric by 2020, which would be the world’s most ambitious achievement of this kind.

One of the main impediments to a wider application of municipal green projects is the constraint on the power of local government:

There are two formidable obstacles blocking a larger role for cities: a paucity of resources and the absence of autonomy and jurisdiction. The European Union favours regions over cities, and works more on agricultural subsidies than affordable urban housing. In the United States, the structure of congressional representation means a suburban and rural minority rules over the urban majority.

Here in Canada, at least in Ontario, what a local government can do, as Toronto mayor John Tory found out to his great disgruntlement, is only what the provincial government will permit it to do. Road tolls in Toronto, as had been proposed and initially approved by the Wynne government, was ultimately vetoed, given that a provincial election is pending next year, and motorists have long memories.

There is only one answer, according to Barber:

If cities are to get the power they need, they will have to demand the right of self-governance...

Because urban citizens are the planet’s majority, their natural rights are endowed with democratic urgency. They carry the noble name of “citizen”, associated with the word “city”. But the aim is not to set urban against rural: it is to restore a more judicious balance between them. Today it is cities that look forward, speaking to global common goods, while fearful nations look back.

We, as a species, have a clear choice: continue on our present heedless course to planetary destruction, or start to make the hard, painful and expensive choices in order to live to fight another day.

The Ultimate Throwaway Species

My mother was fond of repeating an old adage: "You've made your bed. Now lie it it."

While that advice, in one form or another, has probably been meted out for centuries, renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking apparently doesn't think very much of it.

In "Expedition New Earth" — a documentary that debuts this summer as part of the BBC’s "Tomorrow’s World" science season — Hawking claims that Mother Earth would greatly appreciate it if we could gather our belongings and get out — not in 1,000 years, but in the next century or so.

“Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive,” the BBC said with a notable absence of punctuation marks in a statement posted online. “With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious.”

So essentially, since we have trashed this planet, it is time to export our diseased kind to other worlds.

We have become the ultimate throwaway species.

Weather Porn

Since few seem willing to confront root causes, I guess that's what these stories of weather disasters are becoming.

It's Too Late

As of late, after reading and viewing all of the bad news the world has to offer, especially with regard to rising sea levels and increasingly violent and intense storms wrought by climate change, I have come to the conclusion that there is no hope for us as a species. This is a new conclusion for me; despite being an inveterate pessimist, I have always held to just a sliver of hope that things could change, that we can't be counted out of the game yet.

No one event pushed me over the edge; I think it was just the relentless refusal of our political caste to take seriously the crisis engulfing us. Donald Trump's passion to unleash even more fossil fuel into our atmosphere, and Justin Trudeau's facile, fundamentally dishonest and juvenile insistence that environmental amelioration and exploitation of the tarsands are not mutually incompatible are but two symptoms of a western population that insists on having its every whim and consumptive desire met post-haste. Perhaps deep down, there is also an egoistic and hubristic inability to contemplate our own demise.

I read Owen's blog this morning, a sobering post well-worth your time, and here is the comment I left with him:

Of late I have been forced to conclude that there will be no turning back from the precipice, that the dark forces unleashed by our heedlessness are leading us to our inevitable fall. A shame really, especially when I see on the news almost every night stories of personal bravery and compassion where people put their own comfort, safety and well-being on the line to help or rescue another in distress or peril. I see in those stories the narrative of what we could have been as a species.

Here is but one poignant example:

Coastal Concerns

As I wrote earlier this year, I have pledged not to visit the United States until, at the very least, the Donald Trump presidency is history. That does not mean, however, that my attraction to the west coast, in particular, California, has diminished. Were these better times, I likely would have paid a second visit to a state that appeals to me on many levels.

It is therefore heartening to see that there is no lessening of resistance in the Golden State to Trump and his mad policies of unleashing more fossil fuels to generate economic growth. Long known for its progressive environmental policies, California has no intention of acquiescing in the Orange Ogre's mad plans:

President Donald Trump painted a golden future of “great wealth” and “great jobs” powered by oil pumped from the ocean floor as he signed an executive order on Friday to consider new offshore drilling around the country.

But his efforts could splash harmlessly against the hardened barricades that California has been fortifying for decades with regulation and legislation to prevent additional drilling along its treasured coast.

Traumatized by past oil spills, Californians are in no mood for Trump's disdain for the environment:

“We will fight to the end,” said Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network, an environmental group. “They will not get any new oil on these shores."

“Californians will not stand for this,” said Jennifer Savage, a spokeswoman for the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group. “We love our coast. It's our playground, the driving force of our economy, the place where we find solace, joy and sustenance.”

California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, along with Gov. Jerry Brown and top lawmakers, promised to fight any oil drilling.

“Instead of taking us backward, the federal government should work with us to advance the clean energy economy that’s creating jobs, providing energy and preserving California’s natural beauty,” he said.

State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) quickly announced new legislation Friday that would bar state commissions from allowing any new oil infrastructure along the coast, from piers to pipelines.

The legislation, scheduled to be introduced next week, would buttress opposition to offshore drilling from the California Coastal Commission and the State Lands Commission, who have jurisdiction over the coastline and the waters stretching three miles into the ocean.

"California’s door is closed to President Trump’s Pacific oil and gas drilling,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is chairman of the state’s lands commission.

While others, including our prime minister, suggest that exploitation of fossil fuels and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, Californians, it would seem, are in no mood for either hollow rhetoric or risk-taking.

The Simpsons Skewer Trump's First 100 Days

This little gem speaks for itself.

How Much Does That Plastic Bottle Really Cost?

For me, the plastic water bottle is an apt symbol for the mentality that encapsulates the western world today: the passion for convenience, abject, complete disregard for the environment, and the narcissistic drive for the satisfaction of personal wants no matter what the ultimate cost may be.

Star reader Paul A. Wilson of Toronto reminds us of the true cost of such indefensible egoism. We would all do well to heed his words:

Re: That plastic bottle you tossed is on its way to Arctic, April 22

The time has come for us to start dismantling the bottled-water industry. The Wellington Water Watchers and letter writers to the Star have convincingly argued that we need to protect our precious groundwater resources.

Now scientists are showing us we produce and throw away so many plastic products that we are destroying our oceans and the marine life. We should care less about the profits of huge multi-national companies like Nestlé and more about the long-term health of our planet and our children.

When we learned about environmental dangers in the past, our country often joined the international community to tackle problems such as acid rain, the use of DDT, lead in gasoline and the uncontrolled dumping of toxic chemicals in our waterways.

We should be able to apply the same resolve to this issue of sustainable water resources as we did when we became global leaders in the campaign to ban landmines.

We have the ability to make the necessary changes. We just have to stop procrastinating and act in ways designed to help our planet survive so our next generation will have a livable home.