Is a Floating "Wetropolis" the Answer for Rising Sea Levels?

You know things have gotten dead serious with respect to climate change when major world leaders are no longer talking about cutting emissions and instead talking about "geoengineering" or even simply throwing in the towel and evacuating their nations en-masse from rising sea levels.

Let's start with the first of our doomsday scenarios. Geoengineering is an emerging scientific field that aims to use frighteningly large-scale engineering projects to counter the effects of climate change. Part of the concession the field of geoengineering is making by default is that limiting our carbon emissions - or even eliminating them altogether and becoming carbon-neutral - is not enough to stop the most devastating impacts of climate such as:

• Global average temperature increase of between 1.8 and 4 degrees C (4-9 degrees F)
• Sea level rise of up to 1.5 feet by 2100
• More frequent severe storms (cough:Katrina:cough)
• Longer and more intense heat waves and droughts (Texas, are you listening?)
• More sporadic rainfall overall

All of these effects are now generally accepted among the scientific community as likely to occur if they are not already occurring. The very fact that we are talking about a "tropical Germany", submerged skyscrapers in New York City, and hundreds of summer heat-related deaths in Seattle by 2050 is evidence that climate change is spinning out of control faster than our ability to respond.

At least for now, the field of geoengineering is has little funding and is not understood to be a viable solution to the climate change mess. Proposals such as ocean iron fertilization to boost phytoplankton growth and soak up ocean carbon sound effective, but there is no way of knowing currently whether it is cost-effective. How much carbon would you have to displace to be able to justify the expense? Other ideas, such as space mirrors or cloud reflectivity enhancement are no more effective and could produce nasty unintended side effects. 

Ocean iron fertilization off the coast of Argentina

So clearly how we build our cities' infrastructure must drastically change even as we cut emissions well into the future. Here are some of the more outlandish ideas on the table for retrofitting our coastal cities to deal with rising sea levels and climate change: 

In San Francisco, Iwamoto Scott Architecture imagines so-called "fog flowers" that would be installed on Twin Peaks and other major hilltops to collect the condensation from incoming fog belts. This method of water collection would be very important, as water resources are expected to be very strained in the coming years.

Farther downhill, high-rise residential towers double as algae farms for biodiesel production.

"Fog Flowers" covering Ocean Beach in the Outer Sunset

Images courtesy of Inhabitat

Another alternative comes from the increasingly water-logged city of Bangkok. Already home to 12 million people in a marshy river delta that will face more flooding with rising sea levels, a plan from the designers S+PBA aims to embrace flooding as a constant resource in a more resilient "wetropolis".

The vegetation basis for the Wetropolis is a forest of indigenous mangroves, which the government is already trying to implement in Bangkok. The mangroves naturally filter water, and they also supply fresh oxygen and natural cooling. As the water is filtered, shrimp farming can flourish in a sustainable manner. The community will live above the water fields in a network of interconnected homes, walkways, and roads, with curvaceous lines that emulate the rippling water below.

Dubbed "A Post Diluvian Future", the "wetropolis" suspended above mangroves would allow Bangkok to live sustainably with natural flooding as a constant, rather than something to resist. The plan would also help detoxify the city's polluted water supply, a major protection against the more frequent droughts tropical climates are likely to face.

Now let's say you are a tiny, impoverished South Pacific island nation without the money for geo-engineering or fancy design remodels like these. What do you do then?

According to a recent story in The Guardian, the president 100,000 person nation of Kiribati, Anote Tong, recently announced that he had been looking at plans to evacuate the island chain onto structures resembling gigantic floating lilypads:

"The last time I saw the models, I was like 'wow it's like science fiction, almost like something in space. So modern, I don't know if our people could live on it. But what would you do for your grandchildren? If you're faced with the option of being submerged, with your family, would you jump on an oil rig like that? And [I] think the answer is 'yes'. We are running out of options, so we are considering all of them."

Whoa...can you imagine President Obama getting up on his podium and telling the citizens of New York or San Francisco, "you know, we really tried to do something about this global warming business, but you wouldn't listen, so we have no choice. All aboard the floating lilypad, everybody" ? Insanity would quickly ensue. The fact that the Kiribati president has made such statements and is still alive and still president is testament to how imperiled these and other island nations like the Maldives, Seychelles, and Tuvalu really are.

The structures are the brainchild of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. This "ecopolis" would not only be able to produce its own energy through solar, wind, tidal and biomass but would also process CO2 in the atmosphere and absorb it into its titanium dioxide skin.

The nation of Kiribati, just south of Hawaii, faces a bill of $900 million to shore up its infrastructure in the face of rising sea level projections for 2050. With most of the islands less than two meters above sea level and only a population of 100,000 how exactly are they supposed to pay for that?

Solutions like Callebaut's lilypad may look ridiculous and farfetched, but they are grounded in a tradition of artificial islands. For centuries, people have lived on floating islands of reedgrass in Lake Titicaca, Peru.

Floating villages of Lake Titicaca...yes, that really is the name of the lake :)

The sad truth is that unless we really start getting our act together on climate change, we too may have to look at these pretty fucking outlandish floating scenarios with a more serious eye.

Solar-Powered Gas Clouds Coming to 2022 World Cup Stadium

Awhile back I wrote about the competing architectural designs for the 2022 World Cup, to be held in the tiny Persian Gulf oil-state of Qatar.

That these oil barons have money to burn is very evident in the designs themselves: each stadium seems to be begging to take the prize for outlandish and most extravagant arenas in sports. One featured a "media membrane" with live footage covering the outer stadium walls, another goes to the lengths of sheathing its roof in a continuous film of flowing water in the cooling process.

Here's probably the most bizarre idea coming from architects who clearly have their 'budget' taken care of. Engineers at Qatar University have developed a solar-powered, gas-filled cloud that supposedly will shade spectators and athletes from the 125-degree heat. The clouds can be maneuvered via remote control and run a cool $500,000 each.

I wonder how long it will take for this type of "remote-control solar-powered gas-cooling cloud" trend to trickle down to the consumer masses. It isn't too hard to imagine decades from now, people walking down the street in Phoenix, AZ using their 12G iPhones to power their own personal gas-cooling clouds, utterly oblivious to the baking heat around them. That sounds so Jetson's, doesn't it? Perhaps that is a bit like other "technologies of the future" that always will be - like hydrogen fuel cells, cold fusion, retinal scanners, and robotic prostitutes.

What do you think of this type of technology? Is it an achievement that we can now, with the click of a remote-control, create steady shade wherever we want? Or might it have more sinister consequences, like heavy greenhouse gas emissions that Arabs with deep pockets are simply too insulated to ignore?


Via: Inhabitat

Bike-Only Boulevards: This Would Be Portland's Idea...

In Seattle, late February marks the unofficial start of biking season, because let's be honest, everyone except the most hardcore bike commuters and Critical Mass-types among us has pretty much had their bike sadly rusting away in storage since late October.

So in honor of this, I dusted off my 15-year-old Trek hybrid bike, which had been sitting in my apartment's front doorway almost unused since I moved here in...gulp....September! I'm a terrible cyclist - terrible, terrible, terrible. Bicycling used to be a big part of my life, the one type of exercise I never wanted to quit, the way I discovered new neighborhoods anywhere I went. Hell, a 60-mile ride around Lake Washington was a "training ride" at one point for me not so long ago. I promise to redeem myself this year by doing two things:

1) Train for and do STP, the annual 10,000 rider-strong race from Seattle to Portland. I did STP two years and absolutely loved it!!! There's free food and drinks every 20 miles (a drop in the bucket compared to the 200 miles between the two cities), and my favorite part about it - getting tranced out on my iPod the whole f*cking way there. Wouldn't do it any other way :-)

2) I will devote more space on Green My Fleet to bike-related issues, like bike infrastructure, bike sharing, upcoming rides and events, and bicycle cultures from around the world.

Riding through one of my favorite cities in the entire world - Valencia, Spain

In deference to ultimatum #2, I found a pretty interesting trend that's emerging among the more left-leaning green circles of - where else ?- Portland, Oregon: bike-only boulevards. What's that, you ask? A street where only bikes are allowed - in America??? Impossible. It has to be the psychotic dream of some deranged  hipster twat with chronic anomie and gauged ears! (see below in case you missed the latest episode of Portlandia):



You'd be wrong in thinking that bike-only boulevards are doomed to be an idea of the loony fringe, however. Portland happens to the be the US city with the largest bicycle mode share of 7% (planner-speak for the proportionate ways we get from point A to point B), but it pales compared to bike-friendly cities internationally. European cities take the cake on bicycle population - some 30-35% of all trips are made by bike in most Dutch cities, as well as many cities in France, Germany, and Scandinavia. That most US cities, including Seattle (2% bike mode share), fall way behind Portland is an indictment of our unsustainable transportation system in general.

Portland achieved the success it did by allocating more bike infrastructure - bike lanes, sharrows, bike racks on buses and light rail trains - than any other American city for many years. Portland pioneered the neighborhood bicycle boulevard and the traffic-separated bicycle track that were a first in the US, though hardly elsewhere. A large portion of Portland's large biking population is due not only to its relatively flat geography and outdoorsy culture, but also its 15 neighborhood bicycle boulevards, where traffic is calmed to the point where cyclists almost begin to take precedence over cars.

Recently installed traffic-separated bike track on Manhattan's 9th Avenue, photo courtesy of Seth Holladay of http://www.nycbikemaps.com

Recently, though, Portland's bicycle hegemony may be slipping. Portland was bested by Minneapolis as the most bike-friendly city in America by Bicycle Magazine this past spring. New York City has laid 250 miles of bike lanes in the past three years alone under the partnership between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Meanwhile, bike-sharing systems are sprouting up like weeds across the US, from Washington DC to Denver, San Francisco, and Miami, and Portland is nowhere to be found on this important trend.

Bike-only boulevards represent one of the great bits of uncharted territory for bike infrastructure that Portland and other cities are now looking to tap into. How exactly do you make the transition to a street completely dedicated to bikes? This is something no city in the US can match, and only the densest parts of Amsterdam have any experience with. One of the most important ways to encourage more people to hop on their bikes is to eliminate the threat of riding in traffic, a danger that deters an estimated 60% of "would-be cyclists", that is, people who say they would like to ride their bikes as their primary mode of transport but choose not to.

So by this measure, all of the previous bike infrastructure we've ever experimented with doesn't even come close to meeting people's needs. Bike lanes are often narrow, rarely continuous, and provide zero safety if cars are speeding just inches away from you at 40 miles an hour or more. Most streets lack the space for a dedicated bicycle track, so this option does little for us. Bike paths built on railroad spurs, like Seattle's Burke Gilman, are fun recreational spaces but impractical as commuting paths because they are difficult to integrate with the street network and can only be built where there was once a railroad. Sharrows don't even pretend to give you any space as a cyclist - rather than allocating any street width for bikes, they just paint a bicycle on the asphalt to "warn cars" that bikes might be nearby. Big help that is...

There's already a great deal of evidence in support of bike-only boulevards. The city of Bogota, Colombia, regularly sees almost two million people use its 100-mile plus system of bicycle boulevards that are closed on Sundays as part of its Ciclovia (Spanish for "bike-highway"). Los Angeles copied the event with its own CicLAvia series and likewise saw a huge increase in people out on their bikes. Why? Because the bike-only boulevards remove car traffic and finally make people feel safe being on their bikes.

As cities grapple with how to become more sustainable, we're set with some very big goals to achieve. San Francisco aims to have 20% of its residents moving by bike in just ten years, by 2020. Portland is aiming even higher, 25% bicyclists by the same year. It might just take something otherwise considered radical to hit targets like these. The San Francisco Bike Coalition is lobbying the city's Board of Supervisors to install 27 miles of bike-only boulevards that connect the most important commercial and transit hubs. I can only suspect a proposal like this would cost far less than what the city has spent so far on who knows how many bike lanes.

The bike-only boulevard trend is even spreading to cities as ass-backwards as Seattle. A "neighborhood greenway", borrowing Portland's granola terminology, is planned for the NE 45th St. corridor in Wallingford.

Will these bike-only boulevards work as truly functional transit arteries, and not just a fun Sunday recreational pastime? If the two boulevards installed in London recently are any indication, we needn't worry about that. Bicycle traffic went up 70% in less than a year since installation, which speaks volumes about the difference good infrastructure makes in our transportation choices.

In case you needed any more motivation to be on the look out for bike superhighways, check out this statistic:

According to a report from the Political Economy Research Institute, a think tank based out of the federal Department of Transportation, construction on bike and pedestrian infrastructure creates TWICE the number of jobs per dollar spent than road construction. Take that, Tea Party assholes!

Paris Starts All-Electric Car Sharing Service

We've all heard of Paris' famous bike-sharing program, Velib. It has become a model for many other citiesaround the world rolling out their bike share systems. With low-cost stations, mobile and credit-card payment systems, and a cost per bike of around $1,000, bike share systems seem relatively simple to run and maintain.

But what about a similar service that rented out electric cars in the same way? Like an all-electric, omnipresent version of Zipcar? Now we're talking about a bit more overhead.

Paris is about to launch the world's first all-electric car-sharing service with publicly accessible stations, called Autolib, modeled just like its successful Velib bike-share system. The program could be operational as soon as September of this year! More details from Inhabitat:

Here’s how it will work: cars will be stored both in parking garages and on the street as part of a public-private partnership between Autolib and the city of Paris. No word yet on how much the program will cost, but Autolib claims that it will be significantly lower than the approximately $7,000 per year that it costs to own a car in the city.

It should be interesting to see how Paris deals with the problem of theft, which has notoriously plagued the Velib bike-share system. An estimated 80% of the initial 8,000 bikes (valued at $3,500 each) were either stolen or damaged in the year 2009, according to The New York Times. Parisians are also known for lighting cars on fire when they get angsty, as well. Perhaps dousing the Autolib cars with flame-retardant finish would do the trick?

Then again, having the support of one French billionaire, to the tune of a $131 million initial investment, should help make sure the cars stay in good shape. Tycoon Vincent Bollore has dropped this change in return for supplying the Autolib system with its first model vehicle, the Pininfarina Bluecar, according to Autoblog Green. The car's lithium battery pack allows a range of 155 miles, roughly the distance you could feasibly drive doing a day's worth of only short jaunts across the city neighborhoods. You'd have to be crazy to want to do long-haul trips on an Autolib car...have you seen their traffic?



If the program launches successfully, this could do wonders for Paris' infrastructure, as well as its reputation as one of the world's greenest cities. They are even looking at banning SUV's and other gas guzzlers from their city center! Can you imagine a New York or San Francisco doing the same? That Paris is even considering measures like these is a testament to their commitment to multimodal transportation - bikes, subways, and above all, walking truly take precedence here. To get people out of their cars, you must first give them a valid choice - that is the lesson American cities are still learning.

Like congestion pricing, with its successful implementation in London, ideas tend to spread among the global cities first (to New York and then San Francisco) and then trickle down the urban hierarchy.

Which means that by 2030, Seattle will have completed three multi-million dollar studies, hired international consultants to review the studies and conclude they're garbage, submitted the proposal to public comment and town meetings, then put it to a vote and, after it's voted down by the public, finally discover that Seattle's more expensive housing and lack of parking is itself the most effective form of "congestion pricing". Oh, you wanted electric car-sharing, too? That can wait until the next election cycle. We're just masters of the process, now, aren't we?

My Senior Thesis - The Real Deal!

Green My Fleet - An Analysis of Puget Sound Clean Air's

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Part Deux

As the world becomes ever more integrated via the Internet, a huge potential source of political mobilization can come from a new version of a familiar campaign tool: the political icon.

Whereas newspapers used to have a monopoly on this medium with editorial cartoonists on staff, today this powerful art form has been crowdsourced to the masses. 

The infographic is something I touched on several weeks ago as a rising trend that can distill complex political issues into easy-to-understand graphics. While we once had Uncle Sam and Smoky the Bear, we now have a new crop of graphic designers coming into the fray of the climate change talks in Cancun.

How do you explain the phenomenon of climate change to someone who is uneducated in science? To a person who is illiterate, even? Graphics like these may hold the answer. They have just enough punch to be provocative, without the vitriol and one-sidedness of a campaign speech or an idiotic soundbite. 

Check it out!

Isn't everything recyclable?

Kind of like "mi casa es su casa", no?

Follow the rest of the progress of the Cancun talks here on their official media website.

Via:  Inhabitat

One more reason to see the Amazon before it's all gone

The Amazon rainforest is the world's hotspot for biodiversity, more so than any other ecosystem. This is almost a cliche, thanks to Planet Earth. But just how much of a hotspot? How many potentially revolutionary plant and animal discoveries are we missing out on each day we burn it to the ground?

According to the World Wildlife Fund, scientists have discovered over 1,200 species in the past 10 years in the Amazon. That equates to a new species to science every three days for a decade. 

This includes included 637 new plant species, 257 fish species, 216 amphibian species, and 39 mammal species. Click here for the full report.

Many of these species have proven to be the missing ingredients to life-saving pharmaceuticals, or the key source of new components for industrial applications. Some of our most everyday products, from rubber to chocolate to bananas to anti-malarial drugs originated in the Amazon.

Rio acari marmoset, one of the new species discovered since 1999

Unfortunately, our own foresight as a species is lacking. Since 1960, about 17% of the Amazon has been destroyed and paved over to make room for new cities, cattle ranches, and soybean plantations (even those used to make Brazil's famously "green" biodiesel). This equals an area twice the size of Spain.

This is one more reason we need to refocus our efforts to protect what many scientists call the "Earth's lungs" for their incredible absorbing powers of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Without this crucial carbon sponge (not to mention the biodiversity within), we are shooting ourselves in the foot in the battle against climate change.

Via: World Changing

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Lately I've become more and more interested in how pictures can speak to our arguments, to our emotions, and to our values. With the midterm elections coming up, it's interesting how a simple graphic can illuminate one set of ideas while simultaneously laying waste to another.

This series of "Infographics" is one of my favorite bits on GOOD magazine. They're produced every few days, and are a great example of how data-rich, visual posters could come to compete with traditional TV political advertising in the Internet Age.

Say you are a pro-immigration candidate and you want to show succinctly how immigrants, legal and illegal, contribute to the economy. Instead of reading off random stats, you could create an interactive poster showing where the immigrants are coming from, what jobs they are working and where.

How about which countries will be most severely affected by climate change?

What issues do Americans care about in this election cycle, compared with previous elections?

Which evil, maniacal special interests are backing your favorite candidate?

Which countries in the world are the most politically corrupt? I'll give you a hint: Mexico and Italy don't rank so well!

Topics, Trends, and Twitters - Planning in the Next 50

This is a presentation I helped to create for the Next City Next 50 symposium, an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Masters in Urban Planning (MUP) degree at the University of Washington.

My co-presenters were Associate Professor Dennis Ryan, Affiliate Professor Jill Sterrett, and Karen Wolf, Strategic Planning and Policy Division Manager for King County.

This presentation focused on the top trends that urban planners will face in the next 50 years. These top trends include food and water security, climate change, social equity, new urban design, demographics, collaborative education, transportation and health, regionalism, and social networking technology (Web 2.0).

I presented on the applications of social networking in urban planning (last 3 slides) to a panel of MUP alumni on January 31, 2010.

Topics, trends, and twitters   planning in the next 50

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Rem Koolhaas Has Grand Alternative Energy Plans for Europe

How exactly will Europe reduce its emissions 20% in ten years, as the EU Covenenant of Mayors wants to do? Renowned architect Rem Koolhaas has a few ideas up his sleeve.

While architects typically are not known for their grand policy proposals on climate change (sticking rather to the energy efficiency of single buildings), Koolhaas has proposed a series of sweeping, regionally-tailored alternative energy developments that will put the EU on the path towards sustainable energy and lower carbon emissions.

Koolhaas' plan aims to reduce overall European emissions 80% by 2050, an even more aggressive target than the Covenant of Mayors signed onto. The current political crisis of the EU, however, puts this plan that is contingent upon supranational cooperation into question.

Check out these graphics!

Before and after in Barcelona....

Via Inhabitat

EU Mayors Pledge to Cut CO2 20% by 2020 - A Step Towards Carbon Neutrality?

While European countries have typically been perceived as more environmentally progressive and more in favor of climate change legislation, the recent breakdown of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen left much to be desired in political commitments to emissions reduction.

In a move that mirrors the earlier pledges of Seattle, Vancouver, Sweden and Denmark to become carbon neutral, the Covenant of Mayors (Europe's corollary to the American Mayors Climate Protection Center) has pledged to reduce overall carbon emissions 20% by 2020. Such a reduction in ten years is substantial, not least because the Covenant of Mayors represents over 500 European cities and over 120 million people in 36 countries, according to the Edie Legal Resource Center. One disticntion of the Covenant of Mayors is that rather than acting against official policy of the federal government, as the Mayors CPC was forced to do during the Bush Administration, the Covenenta of Mayors its itself an initiative of the European Commission and as such has the full range of EU expertise and funding at its disposal.

Like the United States, the EU has reconized the disproportionate role of cities in contributing to climate change. As over 80% of all energy is consumed in cities, this is where any efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions much start. Hopefully, this renewed committment by the EU to reduce carbon emissions will help spur greater investment in the green fleet technologies to create a large number of green jobs.

Via: Worldchanging

Green Fleet Modernization as a Strategy to Fight Climate Change

This paper was the final for Community, Environment, and Planning 302 - Environmental Response, a class that focused on climate change and corresponding policy responses. Areas of study included climatology, restoration ecology, environmental and social justice, food security, urban agriculture, economics, marketing, and environmental policy. My final paper frames green fleet modernization as a policy response to climate change.

Exercise 2   literature review

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Fighting Global Warming through Improved Urban Design

Here's an interesting analysis of carbon neutrality and some of the choices we need to make to achieve it from the Sightline Institute.

Focusing on fleets and personal transportation is very important because these sectors comprise 27% of the US total emissions. However, in order to truly reduce fuel emissions from the transportation sector, we need to create green, alternative ways of getting around to truly give people the sustainable choice to reduce their emissions. Doing so requires a holistic approach to emissions reduction.

A substantial part of reducing the emissions generated by transportation lies in creating dense, walkable communities linked by public transit. 

Higher fuel efficiencies for our vehicles, while a great start, are not enough. According to a recent report from UC Berkeley, even a vehicle that gets 55 miles per gallon (like the Toyota Prius and many hybrid-electric models currently on the market) still consumes 30% of our available annual energy budget. Consuming 100% of this budget, as driving an average of 6,000 miles annually with a vehicle earning 12 m.p.g., would mean that we have already taken up the level of carbon emissions considered "sustainable". Any emissions beyond this point, such as those involved in any other process of everyday life, would directly contribute to global warming.

Studies have indicated that denser, walkable communities are as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as raising the fuel efficiency of our cars. Indeed, some development experts already believe that a majority of Americans would choose such communities if they were available.

For a detailed list of systemic changes to urban design and planning to reduce our emissions, please check out the analysis from WorldChaging here and here.

City of Seattle Announces Plans to Become America's First "Carbon-Neutral" City

The Seattle City Council has released a proposal to make the City of Seattle "carbon neutral" by 2030, according to a recent story in The Stranger. This proposal, first suggested by Alex Steffen (the president of the local think tank WorldChanging) has generated a great deal of controversy over whether this significant of a carbon reduction scheme is even feasible, how carbon neutrality will be defined, and how the carbon neutrality scheme would be administered.

Council members Richard Conlin and Mike O'Brien were the main sponsors of this proposal, announced as one of the City's top legislative priorities of 2010. The proposal materialized in print form on a public forum called Ideas for Seattle, a blog started by the mayoral campaign of Mike McGinn.

Despite the McGinn campaign's initial receptivity to the idea (the forum's 4th most popular), now that Mayor McGinn has been sworn into office his response to carbon neutrality has been more lukewarm.

“Let’s be very clear,” he said in The Stranger. “I support carbon neutrality as a goal. But we’ve been down this path of politicians setting ambitious goals and not following through before”—a reference to his predecessor Greg Nickels’ vow to reduce emissions below 1990 levels, in line with the Kyoto Protocols, by 2012.

McGinn continues,

“We have a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but we’re building a bigger 520, we’re building an auto-only facility on our waterfront, we’re not funding the bike master plan. The question isn’t what the goals should be. The question should be, how do you get there? … If we want to spend a year or two setting up a new goal and creating a work plan to do it while we’re taking actions that accomplish the opposite, that’s not what I think we should be doing.”

Part of the problem in implementing any carbon neutrality scheme stems from criticism that the City will not be able to meet its goal of adhering to its Kyoto Protocol targets by 2012. The City, and former Mayor Greg Nickels in particular, has been the environmental vanguard of American cities in encouraging other municipalities to reduce their emissions through informal, voluntary agreements set through the US Mayors Conference on Climate Change. In this conference, over 1,000 US cities have agreed to cut their emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. Seattle successfully achieved this milestone in October 2007, although whether this emissions reduction can be maintained is being called into question.

According to a recent article in The Seattle Times, most gains from 1990 to 2005 came from cutting pollution associated with residential, commercial and industrial energy use, the study found. Seattle City Light is responsible for most of these emissions reductions (about 60%), through investments it made in carbon offsets for alternative energy projects and selling its stake in ownership of a coal-fired power plant in Centralia.

However, emission from the transportation sector increased 3% during this period, even as total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita decline 2%. Emissions from the transportation sector are expected to spike between 2007 and 2012, and this increase will put Seattle behind its (currently already achieved) Kyoto goal 700,000 tons of carbon annually, according to a City report. Clearly, achieving the City's Kyoto targets as well as carbon neutrality will take a large investment in alternative fuel vehicles, reduced VMTs by city drivers, and an expanded infrastructure car-pooling, car-sharing, walking, bicycling and public transit to make the latter a reality. Evergreen Fleets, whose certifications criteria Seattle could easily supersede within the next several years, was designed partly with carbon neutrality in mind through achieving the former.

There is also significant debate as to what a working definition of carbon neutrality would look like. Scientists have already established that in order to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, we must avoid reaching an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 350ppm. Some estimates show that we have already passed this threshold and are approaching 380ppm globally. This threshold is the scientific basis of the Kyoto Protocol's goal of reducing emissions 80% by 2050, informally called the "80 by 50 rule".

The Kyoto Protocol currently has been signed by mostly the world's most developed countries, of course with the notable exception of the United States. The dilemma is that even if the world's developed countries and the US meet the 80 by 50 goal, developing countries could still increase their emissions to levels more commensurate with their population sizes and put the world well over the important 350ppm threshold. If richer nations do not help rapidly growing poor nations reduce their emissions - and this is by no means a given - then the 80 by 50 goal will lose its effectiveness and make the entire Kyoto regime an international joke.

What this means is that we may have to define carbon neutrality in a way that squares the 350ppm threshold with our own disproportionate responsibility for global greenhouse gas emissions, as the United States produces the largest share of emissions of any country on earth. Taking this element of social equity into account would mean that we would need to take responsibility for emissions reductions that amount to greater than our total emissions. We would, in this sense, become carbon negative and not just carbon neutral. One Swedish study suggests that we would need to become substantially carbon negative through a combination of two processes: reducing our own emissions to nearly zero, already an extremely expensive proposition; and funding green infrastructure in developing countries to simultaneously reduce their emissions even as their populations grow tremendously. This could be put into practice through a global cap-and-trade system, although it would have to have much stronger enforcement mechanisms than Kyoto, which currently has no means of getting any of its members near the 80 by 50 goal.

In addition, there is an emerging debate about how to calculate the City's total carbon emissions under such a policy. Would all emissions created by City residents be the measure, even if the emissions take place outside of the City, such as through travel? Would the measure be limited to just activities within the City limits? How would the life cycle costs of production and consumption of commercial products be calculated for the City's progress? What about the emissions of a port that ships goods all over the world? There are no easy answers to these questions because no other city has been forced to make these decisions.

Obama Administration Announces Improved Federal CAFE Standards

Although Evergreen Fleets may be the nation's first Green Fleets certification program, it soon may have a large number of competitors, thanks to a groundbreaking new policy of the Obama Administration. 


The CAFE - Corporate Average Fuel Economy - standards that govern the fuel economy of the American auto industry have been significantly strengthened in a new federal policy. In a surprisingly progressive move given America's history of resistance to environmental regulation, the new CAFE standards explicitly link a reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions to improved fuel efficiency in our national fleet, the first time the CAFE standards have made such a connection in their history.


According to WorldChanging, a Seattle media non-profit, "covering vehicle model years 2012 to 2016, the legislation will require car makers to achieve an average fuel economy for their fleets of 35.5mpg in 2016 (with 39mpg specified for cars and 30mpg for light trucks). It will replace the current CAFE standard of 27.5mpg for cars and 24mpg for light trucks." 

The standards are very similar to a California proposal that, until a May 19, 2009 EPA waiver granted by Obama, had been declared unconstitutional by the Bush Administration. Before Obama's decision, seventeen other states had agreed to follow California's CAFE standards as soon as the EPA waiver was granted. Mr. Obama's new CAFE standards now supersede any state's CAFE standards and aim to bring the nation's cars and trucks to a fuel efficiency more on par with European standards.


Naturally, both California's efforts to unilaterally set its own CAFE standards and the new standards recently set by Obama generated enormous resistance from the auto industry. However, the new CAFE standards, assuming they are followed, are estimated to have the equivalent impact of saving 900 million tons of carbon or removing 3.7 million cars from the roads.

A Breakdown of Life Cycle Analysis

Here is a more detailed portrait from the EPA of life cycle analysis, a concept that analyzes energy or product investment based on its total cradle-to-grave costs of production (including production of sub-products or materials), refinement, distribution, and consumption.

What is very telling about these charts is the degree to which highly-touted alternative fuels - corn-based ethanol, for example, have been promoted without much regard to whether they are significantly "greener" than conventional petroleum gasoline. This is a great example of how production itself becomes politicized in our society, with various interest groups lobbying federal and state legislatures on behalf of energy sources for which there may be little, if any, environmental benefit. Others argue that any displacement of petroleum gasoline itself is an environmental benefit, regardless of whether using the alternative fuels truly reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions.

New Cab-Sharing Program in NYC Helps to Reduce Emissions and Encourage Carpooling

According to a post at the great urban design blog Inhabitat, the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission just announced they are launching a taxi sharing program where riders will be able to pay a flat fare to be picked up and dropped off at designated taxi share stops. PlaNYC used GIS  data from individual cabs to determine the most heavily-trafficked cab routes in Manhattan. The pilot project is designed to reduce carbon emissions from single-passenger cab trips. There is a great incentive for cab riders to save money with this service because of the flat rate of $3-4 along the proposed cab-share routes. Cab drivers are more likely to drive along these cab-share routes because they stand to earn more money from multiple passengers than single riders. The routes are as follows:

 W. 57th St. and Eighth Ave. with drop-offs allowed on Park Ave. between 57th St. until 42nd St.; W.72nd St. and Columbus Ave. with drop-offs on Park Ave. from 72nd St. to 42nd St.; E. 72nd St. and Third Ave. with drop-offs on Park Avenue from 72nd St. to 42nd St. To start, all stops will be active during morning rush hour only and pick-up sites will be marked with signs.  

Now here's the ultimate test of social capital: Do New Yorkers trust each other enough to regularly share a cab with a complete stranger?