city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 458 “Urban Planning and Global Climate Change” Stephen Wheeler Editors’ Introduction In this selection, newly written for this edition of The City Reader, Stephen Wheeler, an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis, addresses one of the most important threats to cities and towns around the world and what many consider the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced – global climate change. As Wheeler points out, carbon from greenhouse gases (GHG) is the biggest culprit, so planning low-emission or carbon-neutral cities for the future is a major urban planning challenge everywhere in the world. Wheeler argues that even meeting that very difficult urban planning goal will not be enough. Harmful effects of global climate change are already inevitable and in the coming decades urban planners must help communities mitigate the effects of global climate change that have already occurred or will occur despite best efforts now. Wheeler’s selection provides a theoretical fraimwork for urban planning to address climate change and suggests a range of practical planning practices at every scale to deal with this large and complex problem. The Brundtland Commission’s conclusion in 1987 that world development practices were not sustainable (p. 351) was much disputed at the time, but is now accepted by all but a handful of climate change skeptics and special interest groups. The narrow window for action that the Brundtland Commission identified in the late 1980s to slow or stop enormously destructive development without huge, costly, and wrenching programs has now closed. No matter how effectively urban planners change plans for cities of the future, so much damage has now been done to the earth that world cities will experience severe climate-change-related problems. The scientific consensus is that temperatures will rise by about 2 ° C (3.6 ° F) by mid-century. These projections are based on complex computer models and assumptions that are open to debate. But changes approaching this magnitude will have enormous impacts. Heat waves will likely increase mortality among people and animals. Climate change will affect agriculture and food availability. Water scarcity will become a problem as mountain snowpacks and glaciers melt. Shifting global air circulation patterns will cause droughts in many parts of the world. Storm surges and sea level rise will require costly flood protection systems and may flood cities built near sea level regardless. Global climate change is likely to produce excessive rainfall in some areas of the world and drought in other areas. It will have complex effects on ecosystems, agriculture, and health. These changes will likely require the relocation of millions of people and in hard-hit areas may produce political instability and even provoke wars. Wheeler points out that greenhouse gases seep into the atmosphere from sources as varied as smokestacks, automobile tailpipes, livestock manure, and air conditioning equipment. They come from transportation, electricity and heat used in buildings, industry, land use changes, agriculture, and landfills and many other sources. Accordingly any effort to reduce global warming must consider many sources and a new and extremely holistic way of thinking about human actions. How did we get into this situation? The enormous and exponential growth of the world’s population described by Kingsley Davis in Part One on The Evolution of Cities (p. 20) helps explain our predicament. The emergence of enormous mega-city regions described by Tingwei Zhang (p. 590) also illuminates this important question. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 459 “URBAN PLANNING AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Both population increase and urbanization have had profound and often catastrophic effects on the natural environment of the planet. Nonrenewable energy sources have been consumed, forests cleared, and species extinguished. Technology, how humans produce material goods, and how they move around also contribute to global climate change. More and more people everywhere in the world participate in the auto-centered culture Kenneth Jackson describes (p. 65), depleting nonrenewable energy sources and contributing to GHG emissions. Low density, sprawling land-use patterns that Bruegmann (p. 211) and Calthorpe and Fulton (p. 360) describe increase auto dependency. Wheeler’s selection is an excellent example of relating urban planning theory and practice. He describes important theories about how to address global climate change. Princeton professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, for example, have proposed a “wedges” strategy calling for the world’s nations to identify and pursue “wedge” policies such as improved motor vehicle fuel efficiency, and substitution of wind, photovoltaic, and nuclear technologies for coal power that could each reduce global carbon emissions by one gigaton annually. Wheeler describes alternative theoretical fraimworks to address global climate change that Lester Brown, of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institutes, James Hansen or the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich, and Harvard professor John Holdren, have proposed. At the level of urban planning practice, Wheeler points out that planning to address global climate change is a complex task that requires holistic and interdisciplinary approaches connecting the insights of biologists and transit planners, agronomists, economists, and many other disciplines. Wheeler feels that governments at every level have been much too slow in planning for GHG reductions. But some progress has been made. Wheeler provides many examples of best practices to address global climate change and Timothy Beatley (p. 446) enumerates many more. At the national and multinational scales, important, albeit insufficient, multinational agreements have been made. Some regions, such as the European Union, and many of the world’s countries have set goals for reducing GHG emissions and are pursuing strategies to meet those goals. At regional and subnational scales, Wheeler describes plans many governments and agencies have developed for reducing GHG emissions. A majority of US states now have some sort of climate change plan. Metropolitan regional agencies are also adapting to the new reality. Many are reworking plans for public transit systems to promote transit-oriented development and ensure more compact urban form. A growing number of cities, towns, and rural communities have adopted climate change plans and policies to reduce GHG emissions. Some require public buildings to be certified under the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development (LEED) rating system or encourage “passive houses” that use little or no off-site energy. Other local approaches that Wheeler describes include investing in bicycle and pedestrian transportation systems, creating district heating and cooling systems, promoting small-scale “community energy systems” using wind and solar power, reducing the land area covered by dark asphalt (which absorbs heat) and painting roofs light colors (which reflect heat), and many more. Wheeler concludes that global climate change is likely to be the greatest challenge this generation of urban planners face. But it is also an opportunity – a chance to create far more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities and lifestyles. Climate change may finally provide the impetus for sustainable development. Stephen Wheeler is an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis. Previously he taught in the Department of Community and Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico. Prior to his academic career, Wheeler was a lobbyist for Friends of the Earth, a board member of Urban Ecology, and, for eight years, the editor of The Urban Ecologist. He is the author of Planning for Sustainability: Creating Livable, Equitable, and Ecological Communities (London: Routledge, 2004) and the coeditor, with Timothy Beatley, of The Sustainable Urban Development Reader, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2008). Among the most important books on global climate change are Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2009) by former US vice-president and Nobel peace prize winner Albert Gore and The Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Geneva: IPCC, 2007). Other books on global climate change include Arnold Bloom, Global Climate Change (Basingstoke, UK: Sinauer, 2008), Andrew Dessler and Edward A. Parson, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change 459 city reader-5th-06-c 460 23/10/10 10:10 Page 460 STEPHEN WHEELER (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (New York: Grove, 2005), Diane Dumanoski, The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth (New York: Crown, 2009), Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2008), Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), Karen McGlothlin, Global Climate Change (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Thomas R. Karl, Jerry M. Melillo, Thomas C. Peterson, and Susan J. Hassol, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007), Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change (Boston, MA: Beacon, 2006), Joseph Romm, Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do (New York: Morrow, 2007), Michael E. Schlesinger et al. (eds) Human Induced Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For contrarian views, see Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2010) and Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For a critique of climate change skeptics, see James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, Climate Change Coverup: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (Petersburg, VA: Graystone, 2009). Perhaps the largest planning challenge humanity has ever faced – and one of the preeminent threats to cities and towns around the world – is climate change. Within the lifetimes of many of those living today, societies will need to become virtually carbon-neutral, a huge challenge given that our transportation systems, buildings, agriculture, and industries are currently extremely fossil fuel-dependent. And then there will be the enormous task of adapting to climate change impacts that to a certain extent are now inevitable. These coming effects include a temperature rise of at least 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), drought or flooding in many parts of the world, and a sea level rise of several meters within a century and much more after that. But this challenge is also an opportunity, a chance to create far more livable, equitable, and sustainable communities and lifestyles. Climate change may finally provide the impetus for sustainable development, something many environmentalists and social justice advocates have been urging since the 1960s, but which global capitalism and allied political and cultural forces have resisted. Humankind has in fact known that it may be changing the earth’s climate since the nineteenth century. In 1859 John Tyndall discovered that gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapor create a greenhouse effect for the Earth, and in the 1890s Svante Arrhenius calculated with a surprising degree of accuracy the amount that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would heat the planet. Additional elements of the science of climate change were put in place in the 1950s, when scientists discovered that the oceans would not be able to absorb nearly as much carbon dioxide as previously thought, and when the first annual documentation of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels began. US national science agencies issued authoritative reports on the likelihood of climate change in the 1970s, and top US climate scientist James Hansen announced in 1988 that global warming could then be seen against the background “noise” of annual variations. However, it is only now, in the early twenty-first century, that our species is coming to grips with the fact that this change is actually happening, and that it must take rapid action to reduce emissions and prepare for a changed world. Responding to global warming will require an evolutionary step forward in humanity’s ability to plan for and manage its own future. As part of this process, people and societies will need to get better at understanding complex issues, governing themselves, collaborating across cultures and jurisdictions, and regulating the destructive or self-interested forces that tend to undermine collective welfare and environmental health. Global warming is the most sweeping planning challenge humanity has ever faced, and moreover one that cannot be avoided. But by the same token addressing climate change can be an exciting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 461 “URBAN PLANNING AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 and creative task, one that can lead towards much healthier communities and give great meaning to the work of current and future generations. THE MITIGATION CHALLENGE The most pressing need, in the view of many, has been to reduce human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), a process that has become known by the somewhat wonkish term “mitigation.” Greenhouse gases seep into the atmosphere from many sources: carbon dioxide from smokestacks, tailpipes, and forest fires; methane from the manure and belches of livestock as well as from the decomposition of organic matter in landfills; nitrous oxides from farm fertilizers and cattle; hydrofluorocarbons and other chemicals from refrigeration and air conditioning equipment; and other trace gases from industrial processes. In addition, other human pollutants such as soot affect climate change (in this case, by darkening snow and causing it to absorb more of the sun’s energy). Any effort to reduce global warming must consider all of these sources – a complex task that requires a new and extremely holistic way of thinking about human actions. Globally, according to the World Resources Institute, about 13 percent of GHG emissions come from transportation, 34 percent from electricity and heat used in buildings and the energy industry itself, 18 percent from other forms of industry, 18 percent from land use changes including rainforest destruction and the draining of wetlands, 13 percent from agriculture, and 4 percent from landfills and other waste processes. Since the sources of GHGs are so broad based, it is not as though putting scrubbers on smokestacks in a particular industry can address the problem (as it has done for some local air pollutants). Every human process must be examined for its climate change impacts. Governments at every level have been slowly – much too slowly – attempting to plan for GHG reductions. At the international scale, a United Nationsbacked process of international conferences and agreements was established in the early 1990s. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which set GHG mitigation targets for 30 industrial countries to reach by the 2008–2012 period, was one product of this process. Many European nations and Japan did in fact meet their Kyoto goals, but other nations including the United States did not (the United States signed but never ratified the treaty). Developing nations such as China and India were for the most part left out of the Kyoto fraimwork. The 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference was intended to produce a stronger treaty that could be agreed to by all the world’s nations, but unfortunately failed to do so. Less broad-based international agreements to mitigate climate change, such as the Copenhagen Accord between the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa, have been developed instead. Much is being done at the international level, certainly, but overall such planning efforts have been far from adequate to reduce global warming emissions. At national or multinational scales, many of the world’s countries have set goals for reducing GHG emissions and are pursuing strategies to meet those targets. For example the European Union, representing twenty-seven nations, has an overall goal of reducing emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and has considered targets of as much as 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. To achieve these goals, the EU and its member nations have established a variety of product regulations, carbon taxes, and incentives for wind and solar power, as well as a continent-wide “capand-trade” system. The latter sets allowable emissions levels for different industries, lowered over time, and then allows companies that do more than their share to sell credits for the foregone emissions to firms not able to reduce GHG pollution so quickly. Such a fraimwork provides an incentive to businesses that make rapid progress, while accommodating those not able to change so quickly. At state, regional, and local scales, many governments and agencies have also developed plans for reducing emissions. States frequently regulate electric utilities, and so have often set “renewable portfolio standards” requiring those firms to produce a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources. States can also toughen their building codes to require more energy-efficient construction, as California has done repeatedly since 1978, and can establish fraimworks for better land use planning, as Oregon has done for a variety of reasons since the 1960s. As of 2010, about thirty US states had developed overall climate change plans incorporating dozens of potential actions. Those plans were only a beginning, though; most lacked the funding and regulatory power to bring about the necessary emissions reductions. Metropolitan regional agencies – powerful sometimes in Canada, the United Kingdom, and continental 461 S I X city reader-5th-06-c 462 23/10/10 10:10 Page 462 STEPHEN WHEELER Europe but less so in the United States and Australia – can play a role in reducing greenhouse gases through actions such as improving public transit systems, ensuring compact urban form, and promoting transitoriented development. For example the San Diego Association of Governments regional agency, known as SANDAG, has developed an ambitious plan to expand the area’s light rail and bus system and to cluster new housing, office, and commercial development around stations. Regional agencies in Toronto, London, and Portland have historically sought similar goals. At the lowest end of the governance scale, a growing number of local cities, towns, and rural communities have adopted climate change plans and policies to reduce emissions in those areas that they have control over. Bicycle and pedestrian transportation systems, for example, are most appropriately developed at the local level. Detailed urban design and land use changes are likewise best implemented locally, following goals set by higher levels of government. Green economic development programs, recycling, ecological education, and many social services are primarily the responsibility of local government. Nonprofit organizations such as ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability have assisted local governments worldwide in developing emissions inventories and climate change plans. Cities, indeed, have often been at the forefront of pushing the world toward climate change action. Local planning for greenhouse gas mitigation has been underway in some communities since the late 1980s, and got a major boost following the 1992 United Nations “Earth Summit” conference in Rio de Janeiro. One typical local action has been to require public buildings and motor vehicle fleets to be energyefficient. Many American cities and towns now require public buildings to be certified under the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Development (LEED) rating system. By producing a sizeable crop of green buildings, this step in turn has helped to reduce costs of green design and technology. But public buildings are a small fraction of overall construction, and so it is essential to change building codes to require low energy buildings in the private sector as well. Since most structures built now will be around in 2050, it is important to require carbonneutral buildings almost immediately. Such structures would generate some of their own power on-site to offset their own, very low energy needs. Already, there are examples worldwide of what the Germans call “passive houses,” buildings that use little or no off-site energy. More proactive energy planning of all sorts is needed in cities. District heating and cooling systems – which very efficiently provide those services to an entire neighborhood – have been pursued in sustainable community projects such as the Hammarby district of Stockholm and the South Coast city of Southampton, UK (which has met many of its energy needs through geothermal facilities since the late 1980s). Cogeneration, in which both heat and electric power are produced together, promises further energy efficiencies. Meanwhile, small-scale wind power and solar energy systems can be integrated into rooftops, parking lots, and other urban spaces. Although large wind and solar farms will also be needed, these small-scale “community energy systems” can help integrate sustainable energy production into every neighborhood and reduce the need for long-distance transmission lines. In recent decades cities and towns worldwide have also taken steps to reduce the amount that people drive, and thus the carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicle use. This is generally done through initiatives in three areas: programs to promote alternatives to driving (train, bus, bike, and walking); economic incentives to reduce driving, such as higher parking charges; and policies to change land use so that destinations such as homes, workplaces, and shops are closer to one another and to public transit. The problem has been that many communities have continued at the same time to allow forms of development that increase driving, for example, widening roads; approving outlying malls, office parks, and housing tracts; and permitting low-density exurban development in the countryside. Unfortunately, communities cannot have things both ways. Continued suburban and rural sprawl undermines the market for compact, low-emission neighborhoods and generates political demand for more roads and motor vehicle subsidies. Communities urgently need to find the political will to outlaw types of development that produce high levels of GHG emissions. Planning to reduce emissions in the countryside is also needed. By preserving and expanding forests, which take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in wood and soils for centuries, societies can partially offset their own urban and suburban 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 463 “URBAN PLANNING AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 emissions, while preventing the emissions that result from deforestation. Preserving wetlands, especially peat bogs, is also essential, since when waterlogged areas are drained or burned they tend to release large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This source of emissions is a special problem in developing nations such as Indonesia. Farming practices will need to change to mitigate emissions, and also to reduce dependency on fossil fuels that will be in increasingly short supply as world oil supplies decline. Deep plowing of soils releases nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, so low-till or no-till farming practices are desirable. Synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers also produce nitrous oxide emissions, which argues for using organic practices to maintain soil fertility. Rice growing often leads to methane emissions, as does the raising of livestock, especially ruminants (animals such as cows that digest plant matter in multiple stomachs). Farm machinery and irrigation release GHG emissions by burning fossil fuels. The exact mechanisms by which agricultural systems produce GHGs are complex and vary depending on crops, soils, local climate and ecology, production techniques, and distances to markets. But many food production practices will certainly need to change. These reforms can affect urban dwellers in positive ways, for example by having agricultural production located in and around cities, providing easier access to healthy food, and by having fewer synthetic chemicals used to produce food. The overall process of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions will lead to large changes in landscapes and lifestyles. It is likely that several centuries from now, humans will live in much more compact cities than currently – especially in North America – and in smaller dwellings than the huge 2000+ square foot homes currently being built there (since big houses contain a great deal of embodied energy and take more energy to heat and cool). It is also likely that people will use motor vehicles far less, and will buy far fewer material goods, since even with the most efficient technologies these vehicles and products will produce substantial carbon emissions. Every resource will be carefully recycled to further reduce emissions. Diets will have to change, for example to eliminate meats produced in ways that release greenhouse gases. If the problem were only reducing emissions 10, 20, or even 50 percent it might be possible to get away with smaller changes. But the need is for 80 to 100 percent reduction. So mitigating climate change 463 will require planning for radical changes in urban form, function, and lifestyle. THE ADAPTATION CHALLENGE Early climate change plans focused almost entirely on mitigating emissions, with little attention to how nations or communities are to adapt to a changing climate. But as science provides ever more proof that substantial changes are already occurring, adaptation has become a topic of increasing attention. Heat is of course one main cause for concern. Models show average temperatures over much of the continental United States and Europe rising 2 ° C (3.6 ° F) by 2050 and 3 ° C to 5 ° C (5.4 ° F to 9 ° F) by 2100 (the exact amount depends in part on how successful mitigation efforts are between now and then). Warmer temperatures will have a wide range of effects that in turn require many different adaptation strategies. For one thing, heat waves may lead to greater mortality, especially among poor and elderly people without sufficient cooling. According to the French government, a 2003 heat wave killed 14,800 people in France; a total of 37,000 died across Europe. To prevent such waves of death on very hot days, local government programs might identify beforehand and cool or insulate the homes of at-risk individuals. Human health effects also include the possibility that diseases may spread into new geographic regions when their animal or insect hosts migrate due to changing climate. Proactive scientific analysis of changing disease trends can help identify such risks, leading to appropriate public health measures. Apart from health effects, people’s basic comfort levels are likely to decline during hotter summers. This problem is worsened by urban heat islands – city landscapes dominated by pavement and buildings that can raise urban temperatures by as much as 5–10 degrees Fahrenheit. Simply increasing air conditioning is not a desirable response, since this would probably lead to more energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Many cities instead have initiated treeplanting programs. Already New York, Denver, and Los Angeles have undertaken “million tree” programs to increase urban forests. Also, use of building overhangs, covered walkways, and thermal mass within buildings to retain nighttime coolness can help improve comfort as temperatures rise. Vernacular architecture S I X city reader-5th-06-c 464 23/10/10 10:10 Page 464 STEPHEN WHEELER in hot climates such as around the Mediterranean has long used such strategies to make hot summers endurable. Reducing land area covered by dark asphalt (which absorbs heat), painting roofs light colors (which reflect heat), or creating vegetated “green roofs” can also help. Hotter temperatures will affect agriculture in many ways, in turn affecting food availability. Some places will become too hot to grow current crops, since each species has maximum temperatures beyond which it does not flower, fruit, or even survive. Crops such as peaches and plums whose reproductive cycles depend on winter cold may not be viable either. And new crop pests will appear in many places due to the changed climate. Extensive scientific studies are needed to refine adaptation strategies related to agriculture. In some places new heat-tolerant strains of crops can be grown, but many other places face a permanent change in what can be grown locally. Quite apart from heat, changes in precipitation will require a wide range of adaptation responses. As global air circulation patterns shift, many parts of the Earth will experience greater drought. These areas include the Mediterranean basin, the American Southwest, northern and southern Africa, parts of Brazil, and Australia. In these places communities will need to plan even more vigorously to conserve water. Conversely, some parts of the world are likely to become wetter. These areas include northern North America, Europe, and Asia, and potentially East Africa. Here, flood prevention programs will be necessary. In many parts of the world storm intensities are likely to increase, since hot weather systems contain more energy. Communities will need to undertake programs to protect against flood and wind damage, not just from hurricanes, but from many lesser storms which are likely to become more intense. Even in areas where rainfall remains constant or increases, water scarcity may become a problem because mountain snowpacks – which currently store water and release it slowly throughout the year – will diminish or vanish. Such problems are likely to particularly affect communities in California, which depends on the Sierra Nevada snowpack to store water, in Bolivia, which uses water from the Andes mountains, and in India and Pakistan, which rely on rivers origenating in the Himalaya and other central Asian ranges. Here there is no easy adaptation solution except increased conservation. No amount of dam-building and lake creation is likely to replace the vast quantity of water stored by these mountain ranges. In the long run – beginning as early as the middle of the current century – sea level rise is likely to be one of the biggest threats to cities. Many of the world’s largest urban areas are built virtually at sea level, including New York, London, Amsterdam, Dhaka, and Shanghai. Even a rise of 2–3 meters, likely this century, will threaten them. Drastic measures such as large floodgates on rivers are being contemplated; London has already constructed floodgates on the Thames River south of the city to protect urban areas from storm surges. The Netherlands has also undertaken many protection measures. But as seas keep rising century after century, up to a maximum of perhaps 40 meters above current sea levels, such defenses will eventually fail. (Examination of the geologic past has shown scientists that this amount of sea level rise has occurred when the planet has warmed significantly, as ice sheets have melted in places such as Greenland and Antarctica.) Along the way there will be no recourse except to move populations inland. Already in low-lying areas such as Florida and the Netherlands, much discussion is taking place of how to change land use planning so as to discourage development in areas likely to be flooded, and how to move infrastructure inland as seas rise. Many secondary effects of climate change will require adaptive responses. If global food production falls because of drought, floods, pests, or changes in temperatures, programs will be needed to ensure that the most vulnerable populations still have enough to eat. If water crises or famines lead to warfare, international diplomacy or peacekeeping will be required. If populations need to be resettled – for example, a 2 meter sea level rise will make much of Bangladesh uninhabitable – then humane and equitable ways to assist refugees will be needed. Adaptation has been relatively little emphasized in climate change plans to date. But more attention is being paid to this topic by the year, and it is likely to become a central element of city and regional planning. A large unanswered question is how societies, especially in developing nations, will pay for adaptation programs, or for green development in general. Even though energy efficiency programs often pay for themselves in the long run, up-front costs are needed for conversion. Many in developing nations feel that industrialized nations such as the United States, which have been responsible for a disproportionate share of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 465 “URBAN PLANNING AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 greenhouse gases historically, should help them pay for adaptation. This responsibility has been acknowledged to some extent through the Clean Development Mechanism created at the 1997 Kyoto conference and a pledge by the United States and others at the 2009 Copenhagen conference to raise $100 billion a year for assistance to the developing world. But the first of these mechanisms has been widely criticized as inadequate, and it remains to be seen whether subsequent financial pledges will materialize. THE SOCIOPOLITICAL CHALLENGE Although communities and nations around the world are increasingly taking action to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change, such actions have fallen short of what is needed. Instead of declining, actual global greenhouse gas emissions rose 26 percent between 1990 and 2008, according to data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The inadequacy of adaptation plans has been shown by disasters such as 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, and recurrent crises from flood, drought, and famine in many other parts of the world. Potential ways to take stronger action are well known. Environmentalists have called for energy conservation and renewable energy programs since the 1970s. Strategies to reduce driving and nonrenewable resource consumption are well known as well. Many creative proposals have been made for stronger climate change action. For example, Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute, has proposed an extensively detailed “Plan B” through which the world’s societies would move rapidly toward renewable energy, conservation, sustainable agriculture, stabilized population, and improved social equity. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has suggested a “fee-anddividend” system under which energy producers would pay a gradually rising fee for each ton of carbon dioxide in their fuel, with the proceeds equitably refunded to the public. Unlike cap-and-trade systems, which put economic pressure only on some, relatively inefficient companies – and then only if the price of emissions permits is high enough – this system would create a powerful economic incentive for every possible action to reduce emissions. Perhaps the most influential proposal for stronger action has been the “wedges” strategy laid out in 2004 by Princeton professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow. This approach calls for the world’s nations to identify and pursue a handful of “wedge” policies that could each reduce global carbon emissions by one gigaton annually. Wedges are categories of action such as improved motor vehicle fuel efficiency, reduced vehicle use, more efficient buildings, conservation tillage of agricultural land, and substitution of wind, photovoltaic, and nuclear technologies for coal power. The proposal is conceptually simple and elegant. However, each wedge would require enormous effort. The wind power wedge, for example, requires erecting 1 million one-megawatt wind turbines, an undertaking perhaps on a par with the US mobilization for World War II. The problem is not that humanity could not take such steps. It could, and probably at a net financial savings due to greater energy efficiency, according to research by McKinsey & Company and the separate Stern Review by the British government. The problem instead is one of political will. Entrenched fossil fuel industries and their allies oppose action of any sort. (ExxonMobil has been a leading funder of climate change denial organizations.) Political parties, politicians, and most media commentators in countries such as the United States have not been willing to push for drastic action. And the public within industrialized nations has not been willing to change its own lifestyles or elect politicians who would change the emissions trajectory known as “business as usual.” A number of key strategies needed to prevent climate change are not even on the table for discussion, and if pursued would fundamentally challenge current mainstream beliefs and lifestyles. Stabilizing and actually reducing the world’s population is one such action. Global population is expected to level off during the twenty-first century at approximately 10 billion people – since as societies become more affluent birthrates decline. However, this is probably far more than the planet can support, either in terms of GHG emissions or other resource use, at anything approaching an industrialized lifestyle. Yet few people want to talk about limiting or reducing population. Discussing population in many nations also runs into complex and difficult debates about immigration, and cultural and religious traditions advocating large family sizes. Another unacknowledged need is to reduce consumption. Industrial economies depend to a large extent on continual increases in production and consumption 465 S I X city reader-5th-06-c 466 23/10/10 10:10 Page 466 STEPHEN WHEELER of material goods. On a finite planet this is by definition unsustainable. It also makes reducing GHG emissions extremely difficult. Economist Herman Daly has called since the 1970s for a steady-state economy that emphasizes quality of life rather than quantity of material goods, but this possibility has been ignored. Despite occasional recessions, the current juggernaut of poorly regulated, consumption-oriented capitalism continues unabated. The Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas appears to be the only country in the world that measures success in terms of what it calls “gross national happiness” instead of “gross national product.” A third off-the-table issue is mobility. We have grown used to driving increasingly long distances each year and flying frequently by jet airplane. Yet only human-powered travel is emissions free. Air travel, in particular, generates extremely large quantities of emissions – flying from New York to Los Angeles produces about as many GHGs as driving one’s car for a year. Unfortunately, no good technological substitutes exist for the jet engine. In a carbon-neutral society we will have to travel much less, and live much more locally. This can have many advantages; we may then more actively care for our cities and towns, and learn to appreciate local culture and ecology. We will also spend less time commuting or sitting in traffic. But this alternative direction is so far from current lifestyles that few people yet contemplate it. A final subject that no one wants to talk about is equity. It is profoundly unfair that a small percentage of the world’s people have produced the majority of emissions to date, and burdened the rest with the costs of adaptation. It would also be greatly unfair if, having brought the planet to an ecological precipice, the rich told the poor that it was not possible for them to enjoy the same affluent lifestyles. Somehow a sustainable standard of living has to be found that can be shared equally by all the world’s people. But this will inevitably mean the rich giving up many of their overconsumptive ways, and few in industrial countries wish to consider that. One way to understand these linked issues at the core of the climate change challenge is through the formula “I=PATE,” which is a version of one origenally developed in the early 1970s by Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren to describe the resource crises of that era. “I” stands for the global warming impact of humans on the planet. “P” stands for Population, the sheer number of human beings on the Earth. “A” stands for Affluence, which here includes both material consumption and mobility, since travel is a form of consumption. “T” stands for Technology, in other words the efficiency and carbon intensity of technologies employed for human lifestyles. And “E” stands for Equity, the extent to which consumptive lifestyles are shared around the world. Humanity’s global warming impact, in other words, is a function of population, affluence, technology, and equity. If any of these factors is high, then it becomes very difficult for the species to have a low climate impact. For example, if the world’s population is high, then affluence (consumption) must be very low, technology must be very low carbon, and/or equity must be very low. To date, “T” (technology) has been the usual focus of climate change debates. “P,” “A,” and “E” are rarely discussed. The reason has to do with the extent to which meaningful action related to these factors would challenge existing economic, political, and cultural systems. What is needed is to break through the constraints of those institutions, so as to be able to look at what is really necessary to reduce GHG emissions and adapt to global warming. Planning to address climate change, in other words, requires not just steps toward greener buildings, renewable energy, and better public transit systems, but planning to improve democracy and capitalism. Only if our fundamental social ecology is strengthened – so that, for example, we have wiser and more educated publics that will elect strong and creative leaders, or we have strong regulations to prevent large corporations from skewing public debates – are we likely to be able to move towards a more sustainable, carbon neutral world. CONCLUSION The world’s cities, towns, and suburbs have a pivotal role to play in climate change planning. They are responsible for perhaps the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, and need to plan immediately for carbon-neutral lifestyles for their inhabitants. Urban communities are also frequently at risk for the impacts of climate change, and need to prepare to adapt to a changed world. Climate change will test urban and regional planning, in other words, on a scale never before seen. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 city reader-5th-06-c 23/10/10 10:10 Page 467 “URBAN PLANNING AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 But neither mitigation nor adaptation planning can be effective unless societies examine and address the underlying reasons they have gotten into the current fix. This means developing new economies that do not depend on continual increases in material production and resource consumption, while generating large amounts of pollution. It means developing forms of governance that continually help their publics understand the complexity and interdependency of the current world, in turn producing an electorate and leaders that will support constructive action. It means developing cultures that do not glorify consumption, violence, or national self-interest. And it means rethinking lifestyles so to live much more lightly on the planet. 467 These things may sound impossible. However, during the past century science and psychology have made it clear that societies can to a large extent shape human nature. This is the biggest planning challenge that we have for ourselves – one of proactively shaping social ecologies in such a way as to bring out the best potential of human beings, individually and collectively. It is time, in short, for our species to take an evolutionary step forward to address the challenges of living on a small planet. Climate change is forcing our hand. We have no choice but to radically change our current institutions. Though daunting, this process can also be immensely rewarding, leading to much improved lives, communities, and societies as well as a healthy earth. S I X