In a week where Arctic ice has reached a new low and food prices have spiked due to severe droughts in Europe and the United States it feels strange to think that progress is being made in the fight against global climate change. However, over the last couple of weeks four big initiatives have been announced that have potential to make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.

Last week, China announced it will spend some $372 billion on clean energy, energy efficiency, and reducing its use of the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal. Its announcement also made clear that:

Seven Chinese cities and provinces will launch CO2 emissions trading schemes over the next two years ahead of a national scheme later in the decade. (Reuters)

The country is currently the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

On Tuesday, Australia and the European Union announced a partnership to create the world’s largest carbon market, which will begin trading by 2015. Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins encouragingly described the move in an interview:

Given the relatively primitive state of climate change policy around the world, especially considering the scope of the problem, this is a very significant step forward. (Atlantic Cities)

For those keeping score at home, when California’s carbon trading system opens in November it will be the world’s second largest.

Finally, this week the United States stepped up and delivered a big one-two punch:

Energy on the Mind: ‘Don’t Worry, Drive On’ (Video)

From The Post Carbon Institute:

In recent months we’ve seen a spate of articles, reports, and op-eds claiming that peak oil is a worry of the past thanks to so-called “new technologies” that can tap massive amounts of previously inaccessible stores of “unconventional” oil. “Don’t worry, drive on,” we’re told.

But as Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg asks in this short video, what’s really new here? “What’s new is high oil prices and … the economy hates high oil prices.”

You can read more about the video, including its script here. As for Heinberg’s claim that the economy and high oil prices aren’t exactly best friends the UK’s Telegraph newspaper recently reported:

… a disturbing pattern has emerged where each tentative recovery in the world economy sets off an oil price jump that it turn aborts the process. A two point rise in global manufacturing indexes leads to a 30pc rise in oil prices a few months later.

“Oil has become an increasingly scarce commodity. A tight supply picture means that incremental increases in demand lead to an increase in prices, rather than ramping up production. The price of oil is in effect acting as an automatic stabilizer,” they said. If so, it is “stabilizing” the world economy in perma-slump.

Yet another big reason to speed the transition to a clean energy economy while building resilience.

Related:

• ‘We’re still on the slippery slope to peak oil’ (New Scientist)
• ‘The resilience imperative’ (The Tyee)

A quote from Paul Krugman’s recent piece in the New York Times, ‘Loading the Climate Dice’. You can check out the rest of the article here and the James Hansen paper referred to in Krugman’s article here.

Related:

• ‘Record Summer Temperatures, By The Numbers’ (Climate Central)
• ‘Study: Many U.S. cities unprepared for future heat waves’ (Washington Post)

(Infographic source: Climate Central)

Resilient cities: ‘Vancouver plans to face climate change head-on’ (Video)

From The Vancouver Sun:

The city of Vancouver has designed a climate change “adaptation” strategy to tackle a potential increase in street flooding, sewer backups, damaged forests and heat-related illnesses by 2050.

The strategy, scheduled to go to council for approval in principle Tuesday, suggests nine measures to address the potential impacts of climate change, which is expected to bring more intense rain and windstorms, hotter and drier summers and rising sea levels, affecting the city’s economic prosperity and livability.

…

The move is part of the Vancouver’s Greenest City plan that is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by 2020. The specific measures include:

• Complete a coastal flood risk assessment;

• Amend flood-proofing policies;

• Develop and implement a citywide integrated stormwater management plan;

• Continue with sewer separation;

• Develop a backup power policy;

• Continue to implement water conservation actions;

• Support and expand extreme heat planning;

• Include climate change adaptation measures in the next Vancouver Building Bylaw update; and

• Develop and implement a comprehensive Urban Forest Management Plan.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can read the adaptation plan here.

Related:

• ‘Conserving water key, cities warned’ (Vancouver Sun)
• ‘Paying the price: The economic impacts of climate change for Canada’ (NRTEE)
• Photo: ‘Visualizing climate change in Vancouver’ (planted city)
• ‘Study: Many U.S. cities unprepared for future heat waves’ (Washington Post)

(Video: Global BC)

(Photo: planted city)

Japanese proverb

Albert Einstein

Tools for Change | Sustainable Communities: ‘Planning for Turbulence: Shock, Resilience & Innovation’ (Part 1 of 6)

In this keynote talk to the Canadian Association of Planning Students complex systems expert Thomas Homer-Dixon explains some of the dynamic and interconnected issues facing our communities and offers strategies that will help them (and us) thrive in the face of changing conditions. He also cautions that what worked in the past is no longer working.

Homer-Dixon is the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, and a professor in the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development. His books include Carbon Shift (2009), The Upside of Down (2006), which won the 2006 National Business Book Award, and The Ingenuity Gap (2000), winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Non-fiction Award. His recent research has focused on threats to global security in the 21st century and how societies adapt to complex economic, ecological, and technological change.

You can check out more of his work here.

Related:

• ‘Future city planners told stakes are high’ (The Record)

From CBC:

Sea levels are rising much faster along the U.S. east coast than they are around the globe, putting some of the world’s most prized coastal properties in danger of flooding, government researchers report.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists call the 965-kilometre swath a “hot spot” for climbing sea levels caused by global warming.

Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three to four times faster than the global average since 1990, according to the study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

It’s not just a faster rate, but at a faster pace, like a car on a highway “jamming on the accelerator,” said the study’s lead author, Asbury Sallenger Jr., an oceanographer at the agency. He looked at sea levels starting in 1950 and noticed a change beginning in 1990.

Since then, sea levels have gone up globally about 5 centimetres. But in Norfolk, Va., where officials are scrambling to fight more frequent flooding, the sea level has jumped a total of 12.19 centimetres, the research showed. For Philadelphia, levels went up 9.4 centimetres, and in New York City, it was 7.11 centimetres.

Climate change pushes up sea levels because it causes ice sheets in Greenland and west Antarctica to melt and because warmer water expands.

Computer models long have projected higher levels along parts of the U.S. east coast because of changes in ocean currents from global warming, but this is the first study to show that’s already happened.

…

Margaret Davidson, director of the Coastal Services Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Charleston, S.C., said the implications of the new research are “huge when you think about it. Somewhere between Maryland and Massachusetts, you’ve got some bodaciously expensive property at risk.”

Sea level projections matter in coastal states, because flood maps based on those predictions can result in restrictions on property development and affect flood insurance rates.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Map credit: Nature Climate Change)

From CNN:

Singapore’s latest development will finally blossom later this month, with an imposing canopy of artificial trees up to 50 meters high towering over a vast urban oasis.

The colossal solar-powered supertrees are found in the Bay South garden, which opens to the public on June 29. It is part of a 250-acre landscaping project — Gardens by the Bay — that is an initiative from Singapore’s National Parks Board that will see the cultivation of flora and fauna from foreign lands.

The man-made mechanical forest consists of 18 supertrees that act as vertical gardens, generating solar power, acting as air venting ducts for nearby conservatories, and collecting rainwater. To generate electricity, 11 of the supertrees are fitted with solar photovoltaic systems that convert sunlight into energy, which provides lighting and aids water technology within the conservatories below.

Varying in height between 25 and 50 meters, each supertree features tropical flowers and various ferns climbing across its steel framework. The large canopies also operate as temperature moderators, absorbing and dispersing heat, as well as providing shelter from the hot temperatures of Singapore’s climate to visitors walking beneath.

The project is part of a redevelopment scheme to create a new downtown district in the Marina Bay area, on Singapore’s south side. Project organizers hope the completed Gardens by the Bay will become an eco-tourist destination showcasing sustainable practices and plants from across the globe.

…

The horticultural oasis will be a contrast to the country’s extremely dense urban environment, forming part of the government’s overall strategy to transform Singapore into a “city in a garden.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

Rodrigo Rosa, special advisor on sustainability to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, in the CNN article, ‘On the front line of climate change: Five cities battling floods, heat and storms’. 

(Photo credit: C40 Cities) 

Related:

• Interactive infographic: ‘Why Cities? Ending Climate Change Begins in the City’ (C40 Cities)
• ‘How Data is Making Rio de Janeiro a Smarter City’ (The Next Web)