Practical Approaches to Climate Change

One of the more remarkable facets of the political debate over climate change is the almost knee-jerk rejection among conservative skeptics of the science is that they abandon the same can-do spirit of capitalism that they would otherwise adopt when defending the ability of the private sector to solve other problems. Confronted with the necessity of worldwide action to reduce the global disturbances that are driving increased weather volatility and more powerful disasters, they suddenly are filled with doubt about the ability of either public or private sectors, or both together, to successfully shift our energy consumption to less carbon-intensive solutions. They become, in short, the “cannot-do” crowd. Suddenly, there are massive technological and economic obstacles to converting the world economy to solar energy, wind power, geothermal, and just about any energy solution that does not involve fossil fuels.

They suddenly cease to be the advocates of practical problem solving. They must then cover this logical inconsistency by insisting that there is no problem to solve. When science demonstrates otherwise, massive volumes of science such as reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Climate Assessment, and numerous other sources, walls of doubt are constructed that soon take on dimensions of absurdity. I even had one relative tell me that scientists find evidence of climate change because that is what funders want, and if we only stopped funding the research, perhaps the truth would emerge. He was not joking.

With a spate of executive orders on climate having been issued by President Joseph Biden’s White House since taking office, this seems like an ideal time to highlight a book I recently completed that focuses on practical solutions. I had intended to read and review Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis (University of Toronto Press, 2020) before the holidays, but perhaps now, with the Biden inauguration behind us, is the best time to introduce this work by David Miller, former mayor of Toronto, the largest city in Canada.

Biden’s executive orders focus, of course, on federal actions he can take immediately without Congress, such as rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and reinstating EO 13690, an Obama executive order that established the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which President Trump had rescinded in 2017. I am glad to see this guidance reestablished.

David Miller, former mayor of Toronto. Photo borrowed from Wikipedia.

But there is a much larger point that I wish to make by highlighting Miller’s book. It is that many of the solutions this nation and world so badly need as a means of reversing the deleterious impacts of climate change not only already exist but are actively being pursued or implemented by cities throughout the world. Municipal governments have in many cases become the can-do laboratories, often with the help of private-sector partners who are also committed to creating a sustainable economy, without necessarily waiting for more sluggish national governments to act. We do, of course, want the U.S. and other national governments to act because what they do matters. But the blueprint for solving many climate challenges with infrastructure initiatives is readily available.

Miller’s book follows a standard formula of briefly introducing us to what various cities, including Toronto, have been doing over the past two decades to reduce their carbon footprints while making urban areas more appealing and convenient places to live. In separate chapters describing creative local initiatives around energy and electricity; existing and new buildings; public transportation; personal and other transportation; and waste management, Miller walks us through major projects undertaken in a variety of cities around the world.

But he starts with a chapter about the importance of plans and why they matter, for which the answer in part is that they demonstrate commitment on the part of city leadership to articulate climate challenges and then outline solutions with target dates for meaningful accomplishments. He notes that, in a two-week period in April 2019, Los Angeles, New York, and Vancouver all launched climate plans “whose ambitions matched the requirements of science” but also, in the first two cases, recognized that climate change is “inherently unjust” and that “issues of equity and inclusion must be addressed by the plan if it is to succeed.” The importance of cities is that planning is integral to the role of city governments, which manage numerous functions that are both close to the ground and require integrated strategies to ensure that the work moves forward in a cohesive fashion. As an example, he cities the need in Toronto at one point to alter a particular bylaw to ensure the issuance of permits for solar thermal heating installations. Attention to details of a highly practical nature is the essence of success. They are what cities do, or should, anyway.

That attention to detail, however, can help create a roadmap for federal and state or provincial initiatives, which is one reason that presidents like Biden often recruit mayors for cabinet and other programmatic positions where such practical experience can help shape success at a larger scale. They are not the only people who can provide a practical perspective, and not all do, but those who have experimented in addressing practical climate-related problems can be valuable problem solvers.

In the arena of energy, Miller cites the example of Austin, Texas, which plans by 2022 to end the use of coal for electric power production, but needs energy that is “flexible, reliable, and predictable,” which has meant expanding renewable sources but also looking at storage mechanisms ranging from batteries to thermal storage to compressed air. Subsidies and incentives for residential homeowners support installation of rooftop solar energy, but Austin Energy is also helping the city meet its goal of 65 percent generation from renewables by 2025 with industrial-scale solar installations and wind energy. Municipal utilities such as that in Los Angeles have additional latitude to help cities meet such commitments.

Cities vary, as does the mixture of their greenhouse gas emissions. In a city as dense as New York, for example, transportation becomes a smaller proportional contributor because so many people rely on mass transit or simply walk. Buildings, on the other hand, which are often massive consumers of electricity and natural gas, contribute 73 percent of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 21 percent for transportation and 5 percent for waste. But building upgrades such as more efficient water heaters, heating systems, and insulation make a huge difference. Miller details how New York, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, tapped market forces, including disclosure and training to make inefficiencies more visible, and mandates through permitting systems, to drive positive change. The goal, he says, is net zero emissions by 2050 and a 40 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2030.

One could go on with numerous examples from the transportation and waste management sectors, and Miller does, but the point is that, despite the need to reverse much of the negative policy direction of the Trump years and set bold climate goals for the future, many of the solutions already exist. In many cases, national governments, including the U.S. federal government, can closely study what their cities are already accomplishing, or have accomplished, and adapt those solutions to a larger scale, making the results and their feasibility clearer and more visible.

Still, this is not subject matter for Pollyanna types, but for pragmatists willing to roll up their sleeves. As Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, home of the Paris Climate Accord, notes in her afterword, “We have shown the world the potential for city-based action to dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions and get the world on track to halve emissions by 2030. However, we must be realistic: our goals will take significant time and effort to achieve.”

No better time to start than now. That part, at least, seems perfectly clear to the new Biden administration. Little more than a week into his term, they seem to be moving quickly.

Jim Schwab

Petition the White House on Climate Change

I was made aware yesterday of a new petition on the White House website concerning climate change. The White House website has long contained a mechanism by which citizens can initiate an online petition on an issue of concern and then seek support from others to bring that issue to the concern of the President and his staff. To get a formal response from the White House, the petition must attract at least 100,000 signatures in 30 days. The clock is already ticking. Because petitions have a word limit, the statement is brief and to the point:

  1. Reinstate the President’s Climate Action Plan and double down on your commitment to ensuring the U.S. is the leader in combating climate change.
  2. Allow the EPA to do their job and protect the waters, air, and people of the United States. This includes allowing them to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
  3. Use climate change as a lens when making decisions for our country. Don’t pit economic development against environmental protection – that is a false dichotomy.

I have discussed numerous times on this blog why climate change is a serious issue facing this nation’s future, how it affects our vulnerability and undermines our resilience to natural hazards, and the scientific basis for understanding that climate change is a real phenomenon significantly influenced by human activities. While President Trump seems to deny this reality, what he has not offered so far is any scientific evidence to support his assertions. I would go so far as to say he has offered little more than tweets and campaign slogans. It is time to get serious; far, far too much is at stake for the future of both the U.S. and the world to continue in this vein.

If you wish to sign on to the petition, just go to https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-us-worlds-leader-combating-climate-change, and enter your name and a valid, current e-mail address. We may not get the response we desire, but we can at least make our voices heard.

Jim Schwab

Resources for Planners to Address Hazards

Sri Lankans dedicate new housing built in 2005, after the Indian Ocean tsunami, in a Buddhist ceremony.

Sri Lankans dedicate new housing built in 2005, after the Indian Ocean tsunami, in a Buddhist ceremony.

One benefit of increased attention to hazards and climate change within the planning profession is a growing array of valuable literature that can benefit practicing planners and widen the scope of thinking on the subject among academics. This review of books published within the past year or so is intended to highlight some of this new literature and offer some comparisons on the focus and practical value the authors provide.

Because urban planning is ultimately about people and the built environment, it may make sense to start this survey with two books that examine the context within which risk happens. Kathleen Tierney, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado in Boulder and director of the Natural Hazards Center there, sets out in The Social Roots of Risk: Producing Disasters, Promoting Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2014) to reorient our thinking away from the idea that individual natural phenomena—earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.—“cause” the death and destruction that we often associate with them. In fact, she says, the death and destruction, particularly in the modern world, is an artifact of the social decisions that produce and, equally important, distribute risk differentially among populations, often producing widely varying impacts. In the opening chapter, she states, “the organizing idea for this book is that disasters and their impacts are socially produced, and that the forces driving the production of disaster are embedded in the social order itself.”

By itself, the idea that disaster losses result from the collision of natural forces with the built environment should not surprise any planners with a modicum of intelligence. And the built environment is inevitably the result of both individual and community decisions. The devil of Tierney’s thesis lies in the details: paying attention not only to all the social, institutional, and political decisions that either enhance or mitigate risk but to how those decisions get made and for what reasons. It is clear that those impacts are anything but randomly distributed and that most are avoidable, yet the litany of losses marches on. Tierney notes that a great deal of professional attention in recent decades has focused on how people perceive risk, a legitimate area of inquiry, but not nearly as much has focused on the origins of risk and how it was socially constructed. There are reasons, after all, why a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti kills an estimated 300,000 (but who really knows?) yet only dozens at most in California, and why the 1,800 who died during Hurricane Katrina included overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of the economically disadvantaged.

Most planners work in local or regional government, and they serve power structures that must make the decisions, even when they choose to do nothing, that affect these outcomes. In that sense, some of Tierney’s theories and conclusions may challenge our comfort zones because they imply (or state directly) a need to challenge power with regard to these issues. For precisely that reason, I recommend reading it. Most social progress results from stepping outside traditional comfort zones. For planners, it is also within our ethical and legal responsibilities to help protect public health, safety, and welfare.

Those who wish to examine more closely how differential risk affects more vulnerable subsections of community populations can follow up with a case in point provided by Michael R. Greenberg, professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers in New Jersey, where he had a front-row seat to observe Superstorm Sandy in 2012. As a baby boomer with aging parents, he says, the event inspired him to examine the issues such events pose for seniors. Protecting Seniors Against Environmental Disasters: From Hazards and Vulnerability to Prevention and Resilience (Routledge, 2014) closely dissects the vulnerabilities of the rising generation of seniors among baby boomers. It exposes the resulting collision of demographics with natural hazards and often inadequate public policy in considering the reduced resilience that may result. At the same time, he notes that many seniors in good mental and physical health can become assets in using their to help build the very resilience many communities will need in coming decades, if only their communities learn to focus these social resources to address and help solve such problems. My only regret after reading this thoughtful book is that the publisher chose to make it so expensive ($145 hardcover), but perhaps a library or electronic copy can make it more accessible.

Six authors, mostly at Texas A&M University (TAMU) have addressed the question of resilience head-on in Planning for Community Resilience: A Handbook for Reducing Vulnerability to Disasters (Island Press, 2014). Jamie Hicks Masterson, program director of Texas Target Communities (TAMU); Walter Gillis Peacock, professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and director of the Hazards Reduction & Recovery Center (TAMU); Shannon S. Van Zandt, associate professor in the department and director of the Center for Housing and Urban Development (TAMU); Himanshu Grover, assistant professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Regional Planning at the University of Buffalo; Lori Feild Schwarz, comprehensive planning manager for the City of Plano, Texas (and formerly in Galveston); and John T. Cooper, Jr., associate professor of practice in the same department at TAMU, have combined somehow to produce an almost seamless document that lays out a very practical approach to understanding and developing resilience within communities. The book is littered with tables, checklists, and exercises to walk planners and city officials through the necessary analysis to grasp the impacts of everyday planning decisions in connection with natural hazards. The book tends to rely heavily on the Texas and Gulf Coast experiences of the authors, but as they note with a wry sense of humor, “We like to say that if you can plan in Texas, you can plan anywhere.” For the practicing planner, this may well be the most useful of the five books reviewed here.

Two other books represent the rising level of interest among planners in addressing the impacts of climate change, a subject implicit, and sometimes explicitly expressed, in the three books noted above. One of these, Local Climate Action Planning (Island Press, 2012), by Michael R. Boswell, Adrienne I. Greve, and Tammy L. Seale, is actually three years old but still a very useful and well-informed primer for those planners and city officials undertaking to address climate change. The primary focus is actually not hazards but climate action plans, which focus on mitigating climate change by using public policy and planning to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For climate change skeptics, it is worth noting that many of the resulting strategies have local environmental and economic benefits that add to the allure of effective climate action plans. While much of the book addresses techniques like inventorying local greenhouse gas emissions and developing reduction strategies, nonetheless, the authors devote one chapter to climate adaptation and outline means of assessing community sectors for vulnerability to climate change impacts.

Finally, Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons from Natural Hazards Planning (Springer, 2014), assembled from a variety of contributions by editors Bruce C. Glavovic, of New Zealand’s Massey University, and Gavin P. Smith, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brings together the subjects of climate and natural hazards in a way that points to future successes in addressing the increased vulnerabilities associated with climate change. Unlike the other books, it is less a single narrative than an anthology using examples of climate change adaptation from around the world. It is unquestionably the most cosmopolitan and far-reaching of the five books in its aspirations for global relevance, using case studies from South Africa, Peru, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, among other locations, in addition to the United States. The two editors first met while working in different capacities along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and have collaborated periodically ever since. Both have been anxious to explore and explain the critical roles of planning and governance in managing exposure to natural disasters, especially as “practitioners from diverse backgrounds  . . . are faced with the grand challenge of adapting to climate change. Planners who like to mine the experience of other cities and regions in case studies will find plenty to contemplate as they review the mixed international track record of community resilience in facing floods, coastal storms, and other weather-related phenomena influenced by a changing global climate with its wide-ranging variations in specific local settings. It may take a while to digest this substantial book, but it is probably well worth the effort.

 

Jim Schwab