I tossed
this recording of "Greening Portland" into a small line at the bottom
of last week's Radio Ecoshock blog, thinking maybe a few people would be
interested. To my shock, over 400
people downloaded it within two days! I
didn't know that many people read my humble show notes... Thanks for being here.
I'll go into
a description of this week's program and speakers, followed by a bigger
question about the role of cities in solving climate change, now that we
see big governments too paralyzed, or too corrupt, to act. We'll role through the latest Scientific
American article, James Howard Kunstler's theory, Derrick Jensen's despair, and
a glance at the ideas of Dr. Bill Rees.
Maybe cities are the leaders, the only meaningful level of government?
What
makes the city of Portland so desirable as a place to live? It's walkable, a national leader in bicycle
commuting, and a green model in many respects.
Yet this
West Coast allure also drives unique problems for Portland. Sure the economic crash brought high
unemployment, as everywhere else. But Portland has become a refuge city, a
place where people come seeking jobs and a comfortable social culture. That's raised unemployment and problems like
homelessness. As other West Coast
cities like Vancouver and San Francisco know too well, perceived success breeds
it's own challenges.
To give
you ideas for your own city, we're going to hear a brief from Portland's Green
Mayor Sam Adams. But in a sign of the
times, Adams cedes the stage to the two women who are leading the city's
sustainability drive, Susan Anderson and Erin Flynn. Susan Anderson is the Director of the City of Portland
Bureau of Planning and Sustainability.
Erin Flynn is Urban Development Director for Portland. She's also the driving force behind
Portland's new Five-year Economic Development Strategy.
Mayor
Sam Adams was
elected in May 2008 with a good majority, after four years on Portland City
Council. In addition to his outstanding
green credentials, Adams "is the first openly gay mayor of a top U.S.
city" (according to Wikipedia).
All this
recorded by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock, at the Gaining Ground Resilient
Cities conference in Vancouver, Canada, on October 20th, 2009. Download this presentation from the Cities
page at ecoshock.org.
At the end, we'll also hear a clip from Sarah Severn, a VP of the Nike corporation, which has headquarters in Portland. Did you know the "air" in Nike running shoes was actually a terrible global warming gas? (Sulfur hexafloride). We'll hear how Nike fixed that, and their other efforts toward sustainable energy.
That same
morning, Sarah Severn of Nike, the shoe maker, outlined their efforts to green
the corporation. She covered such
things as water usage, toxics in their materials and manufacturing, and this
brief on Nike and climate change. You
can download Sarah Severn's full 26 minute presentation from the Cities page at
ecoshock.org. (26 min, 6 MB here)
Sarah has
been the Global Director of Nike's Environmental Action Team (NEAT), a department
of Nike's Corporate Responsibility division.
She's also on the Board of Directors of the non-profit group "Focus
the Nation" ("Community and the Road to
Copenhagen")[http://www.focusthenation.org/]
The
introduction is by Rob
Abbott, the corporate greening consultant, and author of the upcoming book
"Conscious Endeavors: Business, Society and the Journey to
Sustainability"
Find out
more about the conference at gaininggroundsummit.com.
CAN
CITIES SAVE THE CLIMATE?
CAN
CITIES SAVE THE CLIMATE?
That's
the question many people are asking, including the latest issue of Scientific
American. Their article, titled
"Can Local Governments Solve Global Warming?" has the subtitle
"Local governments vow to press ahead with emissions reductions regardless
of the outcome at the upcoming international Copenhagen talks. Can those
efforts carry the day?"
Published
November 11th, 2009 with a link here.
The
question goes deep into the general failure of higher levels of government to
move on climate change, or anything at all.
Take for example James Howard Kunstler's claims that big organizations,
or any kind, are set for failure.
Kunstler
writes one of the most entertaining and cutting blogs, published every Monday
morning at www.kunstler.com. Just this
past week he wrote:
"In
The Long Emergency (2005, Atlantic Monthly Press), I said that we ought to
expect the federal government to become increasingly impotent and ineffectual -
that this would be a hallmark of the times.
In fact, I said that any enterprise organized at the colossal scale
would function poorly in years ahead, whether it was a government, a state
university, a national chain retail company, or a giant Midwestern farm. It is characteristic of the compressive
contraction our society faces that giant hypercomplex systems will wobble and
fail. We should expect this.....
Find the
rest here.
A similar
voice comes from Dr. Bill Rees, the co-inventor of the "ecological
footprint". In two speeches
broadcast recently on Radio Ecoshock found here
(37 min 9 MB at Resilient Cities conference Oct 2009) and here
(24 min 6 MB at Post Carbon Institute workshop) - Rees argues that national
governments are impotent and more or less doomed to failure. He proposes the equivalent of independent
city states trying to become sustainable within their bio-region. Some cities will have products to exchange
with other cities, so there would be trade, Rees argues. But in the long run, as cheap oil runs out,
cities will have to become self-sustaining for food and other products. Globalization, and even the nation-state,
just drive the ecological system into exhaustion.
The next
step into pessimism is Derrick Jensen, author of "End Game". He says civilization isn't sustainable at
all - and no city is sustainable. When
we can't afford the fossil fuel to truck in food, and fly in more food, cities
will have to empty out, I presume.
There is also the problem of soil exhaustion, pollution of local
watersheds, and the fact we've paved over the best farm land.
Here
is a link to my Derrick Jensen primer, broadcast a couple of years ago. 26 minutes on the environmentalism of despair.
Personally,
I don't see cities evaporating or disbanding any time soon. It may take decades for fossil fuels to
become that scarce, and maybe we'll work out some alternative, kinder tech in
the meantime. As a person who has been
fairly self-sufficient on the land in the past, I can guarantee that 3 billion
people, the minimum currently living in cities, are not going to return to the
past of village agriculture.
I'm just
finishing off a binge of recordings on Resilient Cities, found on our Cities
page. Just scroll down on our main
page, find the audio on demand menu, and choose cities. Or click here. I've just got a couple to go in upcoming
weeks, including a talk by one of the founders of the eco-city idea - Richard
Register.
In case
you missed it, find my recording of Vancouver Canada's green Mayor Gregor
Robertson announcing his new 10 step green city plan (10 min 2 MB) here.
We
welcome our 18th college and community station to Radio Ecoshock. It's WRFA_LP
107.9 FM in Jamestown, in Western New York State. We're expecting another to come online soon, in Whitehorse, way
up in Canada's Yukon.
Please
write, phone or email your local radio station, large or small, asking them to
carry Radio Ecoshock. We provide it
free, and advertising free, ready to air.
All for the cause of a better world.
Alex
Smith
host
Radio
Ecoshock