Controlling Carbon Emissions

Following the 21st annual Conference of Parties held in Paris in December last year, an article has recently been released by the World Bank sharing the views of leaders of countries, cities and big business alike on putting a price on carbon. This reflects a world-wide agreements by countries to do more and a shifting focus to businesses to own their role in the global warming crisis.
In this article, we see political leaders from right across the globe including developing countries such as Ethiopia and Mexico voice their reflections on the Paris Agreement and the inevitability of implementing (or for some increasing) a tax on carbon to combat carbon emissions.
Why is it that these developing countries, with much greater concerns than we have in the first world, are taking the necessary steps to combat global warming while Australia is still sitting on the fence and not pulling our own act together on this issue?
Is it because, as a country with a small population, we have a relatively minor contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions and thus think our impact is significant enough to warrant action? Or that we should be exempt? Is it because we still don't believe in climate change? Or is it because we're so strongly dominated by business that we let them run the show and are so concerned for their electoral vote that we refuse to force them to be accountable for their actions?
Maybe carbon tax is not the answer.

As a coach long before I ever studied the Built Environment or Sustainability, I’ve had a lot of experience in understanding what motivates people. One of the most important principles I’ve learnt in training people to do the right thing, is that incentives are a far more powerful motive than punishment. This is a well-known concept for trainers.

I cannot see, then, why this wouldn’t translate into business. Surely businesses, which are run by people, are far more driven to do the right thing when motivated by incentives rather than punishment. That is why I do not believe the Carbon Tax to be the answer. I do not believe it’s entirely without its place, in fact, it may be essential. But it is not comprehensive. Businesses need to be incentivised to learn to do the right thing. Instead of only taxing them heavily when they do the wrong thing (i.e. emit excessive levels of CO2), we should reward them when they do the right thing. We should promote sustainable energy initiatives of companies with an incentive program.

The biggest argument against the Carbon tax in Australia is the secondary impacts it has upon citizens. Where the cost of energy to users was increased significantly to offset the cost to companies. An incentive program would not present the same issues to households. 

This seems to be realised by the president of Mexico, where clean energy certificates were introduced in conjunction with carbon taxing to incentivise businesses to do the right thing.

Another extremely important viewpoint realised in this article is that of Mayor Eduardo Paes of Rio de Janiero who puts the responsibilities for climate change action back on the cities as the source of 70% of emissions. Rather than tackling climate change at the federal level, reducing the issue to a much more manageable level allows greenhouse gas emissions to be tackled at the source and not generalised, accommodating and recognising the unique attributes of the city and its inhabitants that contribute to the issue. Below is pictured a Global Climate March event in Rio de Janiero on the 29th November 2015, one of the thousands held in the lead up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Chnage Conference in Paris.

Image: Adelaide Silva, M 2015, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 29 November 2015, accessed from Alamy on 28 April 2016, <http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-rio-de-janeiro-brazil-29th-november-2015-global-climate-march-event-90641797.html>.

Reference:  The World Bank 2016, 'Leaders Set Landmark Global Goals for Pricing Carbon Pollution', The World Bank, 21 April 2016, accessed 28 April 2016, <http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2016/04/21/leaders-set-landmark-global-goals-for-pricing-carbon-pollution>.

Proactive v Reactive Resilience

As highlighted by The Project's Waleed Aly in a recent piece attacking Herald Sun journalist, Andrew Bolt for his ignorance, climate change can no longer be dismissed as a possibility, opinion or even a theory.

Source: The Climate Council 2016, The Bolt Retort, Facebook page, 7 April 2016, accessed 21 April 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/climatecouncil/videos/784838048319457/>.

We can no longer ignore climate change. Surely there is no way our political leaders can continue to refute the evidence. And the time to act is now. We talk about resilience theory more and more. It is our cities' ability to respond to the effects of climate change. But simply recovering from disturbances caused by climate change is a reactive response. Nina-Marie Lister (2016) discusses a transition to Proactive Resilience.

Lister describes how despite more than two decades of research, little has been done in the development of policy strategies and design applications for resilience. While extreme weather events including New York's Superstorm Sandy in 2011 and Toronto's ice storm in 2013 has prompted resilience strategies, these have been reactive and rarely continued on into long-term plans once the crisis has subsided. A proactive response involves coordinated urban planning and design for resilience. Resilience must be built into the design of our cities. So what does this look like?

Well, as urbanisation places increasing pressure on our cities, the quality of the infrastructure being built to support it is diminishing. In order for our cities to be resilient, it is most important to never lose sight of the quality of urban planning and built form. After this most essential factor, Lister discusses three approaches to be incorporated in our cities and in our buildings when designing for resilience.

1. Embracing dynamic system change in favour of stability, certainty and predictability. Dynamicity describes a quality which we more familiarly refer to as 'adaptability'.

Image: Non linear habitat management: Dynamic uses proposed for Massachussets Military Reservation at various stages of ecoloical succession (Lister 2016)

2. Reintegration of landscape with planning and architecture incorporating coastal management policieis and flood management plans

Image: Toronto's Wet Weather Master Plan, drawn in section to depict implication on landscape infrastructures (Lister 2016).

3. Transformative capacity i.e. shifting our perception of acceptable norms our environments need to bounce back to by building in the ability to change with conditions.

Image: Resilience visualised as a function of the adaptive cycle (Lister 2016)

Resilience is an interesting new approach to sustainability and certainly an important consideration not just because it is becoming increasingly relevant with increased frequency and severity of natural disasters but because of its place in responding to war and resource scarcity and financial crises. However, a focus on resilience can sometimes cause a tendency for us to be reactive in our response to sustainability. Resilience-thinking needs to be directed to a proactive approach which equips our cities to avoid the impacts of crisis rather than simply being adequately equipped to recover from crises after they have struck.

Source: Lister, N 2016, 'From Reactive to Proactive Resilience: Designing the New Sustainability', The Nature of Cities, 15 March 2016, accessed 22 April 2016, <http://www.thenatureofcities.com/2016/03/15/from-reactive-to-proactive-resilience-designing-the-new-sustainability/>.

Sustainability and Resilience

In this week’s reading, Charles Redman discusses whether sustainability and resilience, which have started to become interchangeable terms, should be combined or remain distinct. Whilst it has become commonplace for researchers to want to combine Sustainability science and resilience theory, Redman argues that although he at first had the same inclination, “fundamental assumptions within each approach differed and even contradicted each other” (Redman 2012).

Redman’s  purpose in making this argument is that by treating resilience and sustainability separately, the distinctiveness of these approaches may be built upon and then we can focus on how their shared objectives may be achieved. Redman likens resilience and sustainability to adaptation and transformation. While resilience is the “capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining function, structure, feedback capabilities, and therefore identity”, sustainability science seeks to address the “major challenges facing society” while ensuring the wellbeing of humans and the planet (Redman 2012).

Whilst Redman argues for the separation of these approaches and many other academics argue for their combination, I see two distinct terms that not only have significant overlap but which are dependent on each other. While sustainability is an approach to present day challenges without compromising the needs of the future, resilience is the response after the challenge, the urban environment’s inherent ability to bounce back. Whilst these two things can exist as completely separate characteristics, they are unlikely to. A sustainable response to a city responding to crisis would not only be to rebuild itself but to rebuild itself to resist the effects of a repetition of that crisis in the future – to meet the needs of the future generation. Therefore, while maybe not essential, a sustainable city is likely to be, should be, resilient. What about a resilient city? Well, a city that can comfortably bounce back from a crisis is a city that can support itself and its people for the long-term and should therefore be sustainable. But hold up. While this meets our most basic definition of ‘sustainability’ it doesn’t necessarily satisfy the triple-bottom-line ‘sustainability approach’. A resilient city which supports the economy and health and society to bounce back after crisis, cannot be sustainable if it has completely destroyed the environment in the process.

This discussion of resilience vs sustainability reminded me of the self-recycling video I wrote about in my post the other day and a website I discovered shortly after this: http://newplasticseconomy.org/

The New Plastics Economy is a movement driven by the environmental impacts of plastic disposal from the traditional linear economy of make à take à dispose towards a new “circular economy” in which plastics are reused over and over again. Whilst this idea is born out of the ‘sustainability approach’ to tackle a current issue, it has ramifications on the resilience of the plastics economy. Say the raw resource suddenly ran out. The current linear plastics economy would not be able to bounce back from this. It relies on raw material input to keep the system going. The circular system on the other hand, is a more resilient one in which a component (raw material) could be taken out and the system would continue to operate. Say New Plastic Economy’s resolution to the plastic problem was self-recycling as seen in the video from my last post. This system which touches on some sustainability factors such as lower energy emissions but does not satisfy others in its decreased efficiency, is even more resilient as it has a multitude of individual operations functioning so no matter which one is disrupted, it will not affect the continued functioning of any other machine or the system as a whole.  

Source: Redman, C 2012, ‘Should sustainability and resilience be combined or remain distinct pursuits?’, Ecology & Society, vol. 19 no. 2, DOI: 10.5751/ES-06390-190237, pp. 398-405.

Source: Ellen Macarthur Foundation 2016, The New Plastics Economy, accessed 15 April 2016, <http://newplasticseconomy.org/>.

Self-Recycling

Last night Richard Horsfield from Macquarie University's Department of Environmental Sciences gave a lecture on Waste Management for Sustainable Cities. One point raised by Horsfield which I found particularly interesting and got me thinking was that developing countries are much better at recycling. Citizens in these countries perform a lot of self-recycling because recyclable goods are too valuable a resource for people with nothing. This idea of self-recycling reminded me of a video I saw on my facebook news feed.

Video: Hakkens, D 2016, Precious Plastic - create things from plastic, 24 March 2016, accessed on 16 April 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUkOjIP0Ok>.

Dave Hakkens, composer of this video presents a series called 'Precious Plastic' which instructs watchers first how to build their own plastic shredders, teaches them about the different types of recyclable plastics and their melting points, how to build moulds and finally how to turn waste plastics into exciting new things. Hakkens creates a variety of beautiful, durable and useful objects using upcycled plastics and is just one of a number of youtubers, bloggers and the like jumping on the self-recycling band-wagon. Whilst self-recycling has been entwined in the lifestyle of the world's poorest since plastics began, there is now a wealth of information available which encourages the first world to do the same - saving energy, transportation and the user's own dollar in the process. One of the most exciting things I think coming out of this self-recycling phenomenon which is depicted in this video is the creation of plastic spool. Here, we see the opportunity to take the product of quite a base recycling technology and feeding it into one of our newest smart technologies: 3D printing. Plastic spool represents the base ingredient for 3D printing and a magnificent opportunity for creating a world of incredible yet inexpensive, completely recyclable, low energy intensive, super quick objects at the domestic scale. Imagine a future where mass plastic production is no more and 100% of recyclable plastics are reused for better things resulting in minimal need for the manufacture of new plastics. Not only will we be a thriftier and more sustainable people, we will be a more creative and artistic people!

Portable Living

Video: Channel Exclusively 2016, Unbelievable House Truck Transforms, 21 March 2016, accessed 15 April 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV1IRqmBDcE>.

Recently, a friend uploaded this video to facebook with a caption along the lines of "this is so cool, I want this!" Although I dismissed this particular animation as unrealistic with its scale, brick construction and level of hydraulic mechanics being financially not viable, structurally not feasible and spatially not supportive of furniture or other necessities in compact state, I found the video quite thought-provoking for a number of reasons.

Firstly, upon reflecting on changes that could be made to the design depicted in this video, I dissected how a similar idea could in fact be affordable both in its construction and its mechanics, be lighter for transportation and also support inbuilt furniture. I found further videos depicting real-life 'house trucks', all unique and many very luxurious. 

Aside from being pretty cool (also represents the current gap between smart technology as an idea and as a solution), this got me thinking about re-inventing the idea of home and what this could mean for urban sustainability.

Imagine if, instead of setting up permanent buildings, buildings were transportable. Maybe you'd take your car to work in the morning or maybe work would come to you. Land would not have to be destroyed to accommodate housing development however a new roadwork system would certainly be required. Living is suddenly far more affordable since the price of land is what carries the unaffordable cost of breaking into the housing market at present. Maybe we become nomads, seasonal migrators like the Aboriginal ancestors of the land before us but in a far more westernised luxury way, moving from place to place with the seasons and the availability of foods.There are no longer cities so the issue of urban growth is a thing of the past. However, although each unit takes up far less room than a standard lot, we cannot build up, ultimately presenting the same space issues. 

Even with light-weight construction and relying on manual fold-out, this form of housing may be neither affordable for everyone or realistic at a city scale. Which got me thinking further back to a video I saved back in January on how to construct a granny flat for less than $10,000. The builders open up the granny flat as essentially a flat pack of prefabricated panels on site and construct it within only a few hours. The video can be found at this link: http://www.domain.com.au/news/build-a-granny-flat-for-less-than-10k-20140831-10amu2/ 

Video/Images: Walsh, A 2014, Build a granny flat for less than $10k, Domain, 1 Sep 2014, accessed 19 January 2016, <http://www.domain.com.au/news/build-a-granny-flat-for-less-than-10k-20140831-10amu2/>.

Aside from the remarkable speed and waste minimisation that comes with pre-fabricated construction, what struck me about this video was the impermanence of this little home. Not only is this building without foundations but it was constructed on wheels for ease of transportation. Prefabricated construction presents an opportunity for more affordable living but also a new way of thinking about homes - portable houses, adaptable houses, modular houses. That can be moved or renovated or expanded quickly as required for a growing population whilst minimising environmental damage caused by construction. 

Smart Transport

This week, after a friend posted a video on facebook, I discovered the 'Information Civil Engineering' page which is a fascinating resource of time-lapse construction videos and innovative animations. Scrolling through video after video and picture after picture, this page presented a very interesting follow-up to last week's smart city discussion. 

As I mentioned in last week's post, if there is one good thing that could come out of smart solutions, it is smart transportation, a resolution to our car issue. And while the posts I read through on Information Civil Engineering's page do not illustrate innovative new transport solutions, they do depict innovative development processes (or smart construction solutions) to resolving some of the issues with our current transport systems. 

The first image which captured my attention was this one which pictures a truck towing a boring device with a diameter around four times the truck's own width. The reason this image struck me - aside from the obvious wow factor - was that it pictured the exact image my fiance tried to convey to me over the phone only a few night's ago of seeing an enormous truck towing an even larger boring device not dissimilar to this one (although I'm sure not quite this size) along the relatively narrow Castle Hill Road. The boring device is a self-driven machine which has been working away at the tunnel for the north-west rail link for some time. An incredible use of smart technology to construct a public transport network beneath the preciously scarce and valuable land of an increasingly urbanised Sydney. However, I find it a little ironic that a contraption designed to build more efficient transport systems has to be transported by a truck on our everyday commuter roads - and as my fiance recalled, the entire eastbound road had to be closed to do so.

 

Image: Information Civil Engineering 2016, 4 April 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/Information-Civil-Engineering-383870055097958/timeline>

The next image which I loved not because it particularly represents a smart technology but because of what it represents; a variety of transport modes, integrated, working in harmony to deliver an all-inclusive transport system. I don't think we can abolish personal motor transport completely from our cities. Sometimes a car is - whether we like it or not - essential. Hopefully it won't be long before we see the common current day car being replaced completely by a lightweight electrical vehicle with much more sustainable prospects. However, before that day, the image below represents a kind of ideal scenario where there are only a couple of cars on the road (not the major Sydney traffic jams we all have to deal with on a daily basis whether we're taking a car or not), several pedestrians walking and a regular rapid train network for public transport commuters. Whilst provision of improved pedestrian, cycle way and public transport infrastructure is essential, a smart solutions relies on the integration of a variety of transport modes. My main argument against the image below would be that hierarchically, the system requires a restructure (yes, this wouldn't work structurally but just an idea). Motor vehicles should not be provided with the best views of the surrounding waterway (they're driving anyway - they can't look out the window). If road and rail were switched, commuters could be encouraged to catch the train to work everyday just to take advantage of the views. I know that for me, the views over Sydney Harbour from the Harbour Bridge is what made the very long train trip to Crows Nest worthwhile everyday.

Image: Information Civil Engineering 2016, 4 April 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/Information-Civil-Engineering-383870055097958/timeline>

Finally, the below video illustrates again a smart space utilisation strategy for transport in cities to cope with population growth but this time, a different sort of smart technology is being utilised so that a train system can run beneath the sea. I'm not sure what I find more interesting about this idea, that modules of two-way train-line could potentially be prefabricated and linked on site or that the construction site is built to simply float on the water, requiring no land at all. 

Video: Information Civil Engineering 2016, 3 April 2016, <https://www.facebook.com/Information-Civil-Engineering-383870055097958/timeline>

Although we haven't yet started building intercontinental transport systems along the ocean bed, maybe this idea is the beginnings of a new more sustainable system of international travel. I don't think it completely unrealistic to believe that at some time in the future we may be connected to our neighbouring countries by some sort of high-speed sub-ocean rail system. In fact, it's already begun over in Scandinavia where we see the technologies pictured in this video meet the integrated transport network pictured above...

Source: Andrei, M 2015, 'This amazing bridge-tunnel connects Sweden and Denmark', ZME Science, 22 September 2015, accessed 6 April 2016, <http://www.zmescience.com/research/technology/oresunt-bridge-sweden-denmark/>.

This is the Oresund Bridge, an incredible structure stretching 8 km over the Oresund Strait from Denmark to Sweden. Incredibly, this bridge connects into 4 km of underwater tunnel supporting 2 lanes of traffic each way and a two-way train line.