pResilience

Described in this article on WorldChanging, the capital of Japan has embarked on a huge effort to drastically reduce its carbon emissions. Its 10 year Plan aims to reduce CO2 by 25 percent from year 2000 levels by 2020. Perhaps the most ambitious commitment mentioned in the article is to “change the structure of society” if that’s seen to be a necessity. Representatives of all stakeholders will be involved in making that decision.

We have to be willing to admit that whatever structure of society we currently hold dear is, in many ways, a historical accident rather than something planned and drawn up by our forebears. Here in America, our Constitution is subject to reinterpretation as the times, conditions and technologies change. Certainly, if the climate is changing or if the threats of climate change impact are serious enough, we must be willing to change in advance - while we have the luxury of being able to plan those changes.

The city of Tokyo has put the full weight of its buying power behind renewable energy purchases and has recruited many of its largest businesses to cooperate in the project. Appropriate building design and tax incentives are integral elements, as are plans for carbon trading, in spite of resistance from many large businesses.

Governor Shintaro Ishihara has made it known that any government official who feels they cannont achieve their parts of reaching the city’s goals should resign their positions. He’s not fooling around; he wants to motivate all of his forces to realize these crucial emissions reduction goals. Plainly speaking, this is the stance that all political leaders around the world should be taking.

An engineering class at MIT has released the results of a study of carbon emissions based on the full range of USA-based lifestyles, and their findings show that no matter how poor you are - no matter how little you own or how many resources you personally use - there is a floor to your carbon emissions portion - your footprint - below which you cannot sink. And that floor is twice as high as the minimum emissions footprint of people living in any other country.

This is not encouraging news for all of us who are making an honest effort to reduce our impact by changing the way we live, for it indicates that simply by living in this country and enjoying its benefits - even if they amount to using the cast-offs of others - we each carry the karma of American affluence and energy profligacy.

While it may seem surprising that even people whose lifestyles don’t appear extravagant–the homeless, monks, children–are responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions, one major factor is the array of government services that are available to everyone in the United States. These basic services-including police, roads, libraries, the court system and the military-were allocated equally to everyone in the country in this study. Other services that are more specific, such as education or Medicare, were allocated only to those who actually make use of them.

The students conducted detailed interviews or made detailed estimates of the energy usage of 18 lifestyles, spanning the gamut from a vegetarian college student and a 5-year-old up to the ultra-rich-Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates. The energy impact for the rich was estimated from published sources, while all the others were based on direct interviews. The average annual carbon dioxide emissions per person, they found, was 20 metric tons, compared to a world average of four tons.

But the “floor” below which nobody in the U.S. can reach, no matter what their energy choices, turned out to be 8.5 tons, the class found. That was the usage calculated for a homeless person who ate in soup kitchens and slept in homeless shelters. The person with the lowest energy usage was a Buddhist monk who spent six months of every year living in the forest and had total annual spending of $12,500. His carbon footprint was 10.5 tons.

Go spend a year or two in an underdeveloped country, then return to the U.S., with its wealth of highways, vehicles, buildings, services and store inventories - and its obscenely huge defense budget - and it’s pretty clear how the findings of the class could be so. Plus, as Timothy Gutowski, the class’s professor, explains, we are SO affluent that even when we take green steps, we’re likely to offset them with other choices available to us in this culture of unlimited choices.

“When you save energy, you save money,” Gutowski explains. “The question is, how are you going to spend that money?”

The students looked at the factors within each person’s control that might lead to a reduction in their carbon output. They found that achieving significant reductions for the most part required drastic changes that would likely be unacceptable to most people. As a result, they said, “this all suggests to us very significant limits to voluntary actions to reduce impacts, both at a personal level and at a national level.”

Maybe, then, my 12 years of living collectively and sharing resources, had some merit. That lifestyle was certainly “unacceptable to most people.” Back to the future, everyone.

Thanks to Smart Mobs and ZDnet for the link.

In a real David and Goliath confrontation in the early 1970s, a small group of activists managed to turn back a concerted and well-funded effort by developers to populate the scenic Pacific coast of Marin County in California. Where a major highway serving 150,000 new residents was planned, this determined group bought some key parcels of land and stood their ground until the developers abandoned their plans.

It was obvious to the environmentalists that the battle may have been won, but that the war would be ongoing. So they designed an educational program called the Environmental Forum of Marin (EFM) that is celebrating its 35th birthday this month.

As it states its mission:

The Environmental Forum of Marin is dedicated to the protection and enhancement of the environment by educating its Members and the Marin citizenry about environmental issues. In furtherance of this purpose, the goal of EFM is to conduct training programs on environmental issues, provide continuing education for its Members and the public, and influence decision-making.

Every year EFM conducts an 18-week, one-day-per-week educational program called the Sustainable Earth Forum where, for only $380, trainees are taught by a diverse staff of professionals in the many aspects of environmental activism and practice. Each trainee is responsible for completing an original project and graduates become permanent members of EFM.

This strikes me as the kind of program that every locality - county and region - should have to ensure that sustainability issues are well represented by trained professionals. Having a constantly renewed core of such experts in the community can provide the balance required where politics, business and development interests gobble up most of the communications bandwidth.

Planning for the local impacts of climate change is hard to do because climate modeling and forecasting has been relevant to planetary and, at best, regional conditions such as latitudinal bands (mid-latitude, tropical, subtropical), and landmass areas such as the American Southwest or the Gulf Coast. Now a coalition of organizations based in North East England has conducted a study that makes the above claim of being “the most detailed and area-specific” of its kind anywhere.

Citing recent periods of record high temperatures and record destructive floods on the main British Isle, the authors of North East Climate Change Adaptation [PDF doc] described their motivation:

In the North East region, we too have suffered impacts from floods, wind, heatwaves and other weather-related incidents. These events are set to increase by the 2050s under scenarios of climate change. In recognition of the threat posed, a number of North East organisations have formed a partnership to take forward a study to better understand the climate changes, to assess the threats and impacts they pose, and to identify how we need to adapt now to best manage these projected changes and impacts.

The ultimate purpose of such a study must be to establish a sense of director for risk assessment and preparative planning, providing the maximum cushion of time for adaptive planning. The knowledge gained reinforces local resilience by reducing the uncertainty that leaves the local populace wondering, “Why bother if we have no idea what the impacts will be?” Thus, the study describes its accomplishments as having:

Projected climate changes across the region to the 2050s using state-of-the-art modelling techniques;

Assessed the impacts of the projected climate changes on current services, assets,
communities, business and infrastructure;

Identified what needs to be done to adapt to the impacts; and

Identified which organisations are best placed to take the lead in taking forward the identified adaptation actions.

So what could any other similar-sized area do to achieve the same level of knowledge? First of all, a coalition of organizations makes it possible to assemble information from different centers of expertise. The study team took modeling data from very specific and key locations in within the assessment area. They collated data and information according to different sectors such as transport, public utilities, tourism, businesses and coastal erosion. Then they applied the professional expertise of team members to assess climate impacts on each of those sectors. Taking those assessments, local knowledge was then applied to them in a series of consultation workshops.

The study provides more detailed scenarios through the year 2050 than were previously available, projecting more winter flooding, more health impacts during warmer summers, more wildfires in parkland, loss of business productivity and continuity, infrastructure damage, increased pressure on emergency services and increased pollution from contaminated land.

These results drive the study’s authors to insist that both mitigation and adaptation actions be taken in parallel beginning immediately. They provide an Adaption Action Plan to key the next steps.

I can’t help but think that if every locality were to conduct such a study, the outcome would be more serious local efforts to effect change. Reading the report really brings home the reality of the medium-range future. The impacts are all related and include factors that get lost when all you hear is “more flooding and hotter summers.” Think of the side effects - more polluted ground, more rats, more erosion, more fires.

With increased likelihood of events such as flooding, heatwaves and wild fires, there is a need for more awareness amongst the general public so that appropriate preventative actions can be taken to avoid, or minimise, the likelihood of impacts.

Two days ago, the Marin County Board of Supervisors decided on its top five priorities through 2010, and at the top of the list is Launching a local “green” power authority and supporting a greenhouse gas-reduction initiative.

The power authority, called Marin Clean Energy by its chief proponent, Supervisor Charles McGlashan, is a plan “to create a new green power agency in Marin County. Under MCE, Marin County cities and towns would form a Joint Power Authority which would buy renewable power collectively directly, while PG&E would continue to be responsible for the transmission lines, billing and other duties.“

As described on the county government Web site,

Marin Clean Energy would reduce Marin’s greenhouse gas emissions by initially providing twice as much renewable power as we receive now. MCE would also increase price stability over the long term by decreasing our reliance on imported fossil fuels to generate our power. MCE will also fuel small, locally based green businesses. In addition, MCE would enable local decision-making over what kinds of power Marin utilizes.

Cities and towns in Marin County will hold study sessions over the course of this year and citizens will be able to “opt out” of switching over from PG&E service. Of course, PG&E has launched a vigorous mail compaign to contest the local power authority and the local newspaper, the Marin Independent Journal, is questioning the lack of a public referendum on the measure:

This is akin to the government deciding your Internet provider. Or who holds your mortgage or insures your car. The law uses “opt-out” for a simple reason: If customers have to decide which power source they want, there’s a good chance too few users will switch for the power authority to be viable. The law should be changed to allow “opt-in” - to force consumers to make their own choice.

It is too late to change state law for the Marin Clean Energy process to use opt-in.

But it is not too late for the county to put an advisory measure on the ballot - in November when there likely will be record turnout - to find out how voters view the power plan. Each supervisor and council member would know how much support there is in their town or district for the plan. Otherwise, those council members and supervisors will be asked to make a significant and long-term personal financial decision for everyone they represent. If the county refuses to take this step, each city should consider its own advisory vote.

Academicians at MIT and the University of Naples in Italy are experimenting with an online platform combined with moderators that will overcome the social limitations of wikis and discussion forums when applied to solving complex problems. Wikis are subject to “editing wars” where people who disagree on a topic repeatedly “correct” their opponents by deleting or writing over what they’ve posted on the page. Discussion forums often devolve into emotional running flame wars or result in people with opposing viewpoints setting up separate conversations that “talk past” each other. The more complex or charged the topic, the less effective these social platforms become in reaching workable solutions.

Given the urgency of finding workable solutions to climate change threats and impacts, the concept of the Collaboratorium was invented and put to its first test last December. The results are still being analyzed, as described in this abstract on the MIT/Sloan Management Review site.

The Internet does a great job of facilitating knowledge sharing through tools such as wikis and forums. But these tools have their limitations. For example, on controversial topics, wikis can be subject to “edit wars” between people of opposing views, and it can be hard to efficiently sift through the volume of information posted on forums — especially because that information may vary greatly in quality. Could there be better Internet tools for fostering group deliberation on complex issues?

That’s a question researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Naples (Italy) have been exploring — with the aim of promoting collaboration about addressing climate change. In December 2007, Mark Klein of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT, Luca Iandoli of the Department of Business and Managerial Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II and Giuseppe Zollo of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II conducted the first field test of a new Internet-based collaboration platform that Klein calls a “Collaboratorium.”

The “argument-based structure” of the Collaboratorium keeps all remarks relevant to each specific argument in the same place and guards against repetition and duplication. It achieves this not through technology but through good old-fashioned human moderation. The system’s designers estimate that between 5% and 10% of the total users will need to serve in the moderator role or it to work. Users will be able to rate posttings, but the final placement of their contributions will be determined by the team of moderators.

If you’ve been reading here or on my previous blog, Climate Frog, you know Im a big fan of Ron Sims, the climate-focused County Executive of King County, Washington. He was a speaker on April 12 at a forum on climate change and cities sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Sims recognizes the urgency of adaptation in advance of climate change impacts, and has pushed forward initiatives in his county - which includes Seattle - that would anticipate the most likely local impacts and defend lives and property from them. The California Planning and Development Report included the following in its summary of Executive Sims’ remarks at the forum:

If we’re going to be serious about adapting to climate change — and Sims contends we must be  — then we have to change our land use patterns, he said. With its almost total reliance on single-occupancy vehicles, suburban sprawl is not acceptable. Rather, density, mixed-uses and transit are key because they require less energy consumption for daily life and conserve natural areas needed for soaking up carbon and managing resources. Fortunately, the smart growth approach also produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than suburbia does.

“As a nation, we have not planned for global warming,” Sims said. “There isn’t a national policy at all on adaptation. … We are devoid of one at our peril.”

There may be no elected official in the country more passionate about the need to adapt to climate change than Sims, who is in his third term as the leader of King County. During his presentation, Sims said that both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for climate change are crucial.

The King County climate plan adopted in 2007 contains a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. One way of cutting emissions is greatly increasing public transit, which has historically been lacking in the Seattle area. Transit is a priority for Sims.

The other side of the coin — adaptation to climate change — is one that many people are missing, Sims contends. But Sims, whose county lies between Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains, has made adaptation a cornerstone policy. So when scientists predicted that the typical snow level will rise by 1,000 feet in elevation, that torrential rainstorms will hit the region, and that sea level will rise, Sims and other officials went to work rebuilding levees to withstand far bigger floods than the region has seen previously.

Sims summarized the King County adaptation strategy as preserve the forest, improve the transit system, and better manage water resources.

In 1998 in the UK, ruralnet|online was founded to use the Internet as a medium for providing information and support to rural towns. Now, 10 years later, its founders embarked on a new co-design project to make use of Web 2.0 technologies.

The purpose of ruralnet has evolved and its new site is called the Community Carbon Network. Its function is very similar to that of Presilience, but it’s based on a thriving organization of individuals and local communities, where Presilience is currently based on one person’s curiosity and intention to help. From CCN:

Here you will discover other like-minded people taking action to tackle climate change. The network consists of other communities who want to learn more about how to develop and maintain their projects - and share what they know and have learnt in the process.

The network will pull together relevant information from across the worldwide web and deliver it to communities in a way that is timely and easy to access.

Importantly, the network consists of REAL people who want to collaborate with other REAL people; the best information and advice comes from those who have ‘been there and done that’.

The sea is going to rise; that’s almost certain, though by how much and when are both unknown. And if the sea rises, we have options as to the actions we can take in coastal towns. We can build seawalls and levees. We can abandon developed land and buildings and surrender them to the new tidal reach. We can set our town afloat.

The floating option is being developed by the Dutch, who have established a nation based on compromises between water and land. Yes, they continue to work on strengthening and extending dikes and manmade offshore islands. But they understand that a higher sea level is going to intrude in some areas, causing at least occasional flooding. And so they are building arks.

There is a string of 37 houses located along the Maas River in Holland that were designed and built by Dura Vermeer. Such houses can rise 16 feet without problems and contain flexible pipes, electrical, and sewer lines.

The foundation of the sits on the river bottom. If you were to drill a hole through the basement floor, water would come in (so this is not recommended).

When the river floods, the house becomes buoyant. Unlike a boat or an ark, two broad steel posts driven deep into solid ground hold the house in place.

“In the other village we have lived, there was always the water,” said Mariana Smits, a floating homeowner in Maasbommel. “I was very scared. Two times, we have evacuated to leave our old house. This was very scary for us. And we got the opportunity to buy this house. It’s a safe place.”

We’ve got quite a large colony of houseboats nearby in Sausalito. They’re not prepared yet for substantial sea level rise, but float, they do. Here’s the view looking down the Issiquah houseboat dock.

The news release is certainly intriguing:

The GenGreen Network makes its launch as the first comprehensive national online community of individuals, businesses and organizations sharing a common interest in saving the planet. The online resource is a multi-faceted easy to use platform including all the tools anyone needs to live a sustainable life and create local connections for eco-conscious communities all across the country. www.gengreen.org

Indeed, local connections are crucial to building a base of activism for planning and doing in the interest of getting ready for the impacts of climate change. And lifestyle change is absolutely necessary in strategies for both mitigation and adaptation. But somehow, looking at the site, I can’t help but wonder if it’s more feel-good lifestyle than serious practical lifestyle.

It does have potential, however, if it fulfills its promise as a collector of local resources. Activists generally know who their local allies are, but citizens will need to be able to find the local activist groups that most closely reflect their values and interests. Presilience, also, would like to know which groups are active in each locality. Our purpose is to help them become as effective as possible in expanding their organizations to fill local adaptive needs.