planted city

Canada, Our Changing Climate & ‘The Winter That Wasn’t’

Canada’s environmental agency recently released a weather bulletin reporting that:

The national average temperature for the winter of 2011/2012 was 3.6°C above normal (1961-1990 average), based on preliminary data, which makes this the third warmest winter on record since nationwide records began in 1948.

It also noted that Canada’s:

winter temperatures have been at or above normal since 1997.

The infographic above summarizes some of regional impacts of the winter of 2011/2, a.k.a. ‘The Winter That Wasn’t’. 

Related reading:

- ‘Last winter was third-warmest in decades: Environment Canada’ (Postmedia News)

- ‘Ottawa locks in emissions with delays in carbon rules, agency warns’ (Globe & Mail)

- ’Record high greenhouse gases to linger for decades’ (Reuters)

- ‘Extreme weather to worsen with climate change: IPCC’ (Reuters)

- ‘NASA says Canada in ‘hot spot’ of ecological change’ (CBC)

- ‘Great Lakes show massive ice loss, study says’ (CBC)

(Infographic source: The National Post)

Building Urban Resilience: ‘Saga City - Our Communities Facing Climate Change’

From Saga City via Vimeo:

Urban planning has great effects on collective choices that contribute to climate change. By defining the shape of a community, urban planning determines part of its energy consumption, and thus, the quantity of greenhouse gases released by dwellers. Nevertheless, it remains largely out of the general debate on this issue. SAGA CITY invites you to learn more about these stakes through to story of the city of Colvert.

More here.

(Photo credit: Vivre en Ville via Saga City)

From CSR Wire:

Ethical Markets Media, LLC (USA and Brazil), released their 2012 Green Transition Scoreboard® tracking private sector investments since 2007 in green companies and technologies globally, now totaling more than $3.3 trillion.

The 2012 Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) report finds Asia, Europe and Latin America catching up with the USA in total non-government investments and commitments for all facets of green markets.  2011 ended with a GTS total of $3,306,051,439,680, starting from 2007.  Given the many studies indicating that investing $1 trillion annually until 2020 will accelerate the Green Transition worldwide and the over 100 research reports and articles referenced in this years’ update, the”Green Transition Scoreboard® 2012: From Expanding Cleantech Sectors to Emerging Trends in Biomimicry” definitively shows green investments are becoming the norm.

More here.

(Graphic credit: Green Transition Scoreboard)

Infographic: ‘How Are Cities Tackling Climate Change’ 

From C40 Cities:

Earlier this year, C40 and urban sustainability experts Arup released a groundbreaking report detailing these actions and uncovering where mayors hold the most power to effect change. The research found that C40 mayors have strong powers to mitigate and adapt to climate change in sectors from transport to buildings to waste management. Those powers represent a significant opportunity, and one that many city leaders are already seizing.

40 cities across the C40 network have collectively taken 4,734 actions to tackle climate change–more than three quarters of which have been implemented since C40 was founded in 2005.

More here and here.

Christian Parenti, author of ‘Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence’, in the conclusion of his article, ‘Why climate change will foster strange bedfellows’. You can read the rest of it over at CBS News.

(Photo credit: CBS News)

From TriplePundit:

Resilient cities, those that are working to transition towards a low-carbon economy while also preparing to avert the worst of climate change, are gaining interest and attention from policy makers, city councils and others worldwide. In fact, today, leaders from the public and private sector, supported by ICLEI (see below) and the U.S. Green Building Council, are launching a National Leadership Speaker Series on Resiliency and Security in the 21^st Century.

“The battle to prevent catastrophic climate change will be won or lost in our cities…” (C40 Cities Initiative)

Cities account for up to 80% of GHG emissions globally and are home to more than 50% of the world’s population (headed to 60%, 5 billion people by 2030). As I mentioned in my previous post, if we refocus our efforts on the right solutions soon enough, we can mitigate the worst of climate change while actually improving our city economies and growing corporate profits.  Hunter Lovins and I recently published a book entitled Climate Capitalism to share stories of cities and companies around the world who are profiting from that transition to the low carbon economy. Furthermore, the longer we wait the more we will have to pay for adaptation.

…

The Top 10 Resilient Cities Are….

10.) Tokyo, Japan

9.) London, UK

8.) New York, USA 

7.) San Francisco, USA

6.) Paris, France

5.) Vancouver, Canada

4.) Stockholm, Sweden

3.) Barcelona, Spain

2.) Curitiba, Brazil

1.) Copenhagen, Denmark

You can check out the runners up and why each city ranked where it did here.

From Business Green:

The EU remains on track to exceed the international carbon emissions targets imposed through the Kyoto Protocol, despite a 2.4 per cent in emissions last year driven by the bloc’s gradual economic recovery.

According to figures released today as part of the European Commission’s annual report on its progress to meeting its Kyoto targets, EU greenhouse gas emissions for 2010 were 15.5 per cent below 1990 levels despite economic growth of 41 per cent over the same period.

Significantly, emissions across the EU fell for six consecutive years through to and including 2009, even when the bloc was enjoying economic growth.

EU climate change commissioner Connie Hedegaard hailed the report as evidence the EU has successfully decoupled emissions from economic growth through the wider use of low carbon technologies.

“The EU continued decoupling emissions from GDP during the recession,” she said in a statement. “Between 2008 and 2009, emissions fell by 7.1 per cent in the EU-27, much more than the around four per cent contraction in GDP.”

However, she added that the estimated 2.4 per cent increase in emissions last year “shows that we need to continue the decoupling process”.

“Pursuing our efforts to make Europe a low-carbon society is the way forward,” she said. “It will stimulate technological innovation, spur economic growth and create jobs while further reducing emissions so that we meet our 2020 climate and energy targets and long term goals.”

The report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) also confirms the EU-15 countries that face a legally binding requirement to cut emissions by eight per cent against 1990 levels by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol are on track to meet the target and are “most likely to overachieve it”.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: European Climate Foundation via Fast Company)

From the Toronto Star:

Climate change will cost Canada and its people about $5 billion a year by 2020, a groundbreaking analysis for the federal government warns.

Costs will continue to climb steeply, to between $21 billion and $43 billion a year by the 2050s — depending on how much action is taken on reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions and how fast the economy and population grow, the analysis says.

“Climate change will be expensive for Canada and Canadians,” says the report from the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, issued Thursday.

“Increasing greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide will exert a growing economic impact on our own country, exacting a rising price from Canadians as climate change impacts occur here at home.”

The roundtable is a group of business leaders, academics and researchers chosen by the federal government to advise Ottawa on how to deal simultaneously with challenges in the economy and the environment.

The group models several different economic and environmental scenarios to come up with its costs, but generally assumes that the world will be able to contain global warming to about two degrees by 2050, as promised.

The report is among the first thorough attempts to put a price tag on global warming specifically in Canada. It builds on previous research that mapped out the physical effects of climate change in regions across the country.

…

The study also looked at the cost effectiveness of a range of adaptation strategies. It found that most strategies were well worthwhile — efforts such as improving forest-fire protection, planting resilient trees, controlling pests, banning new buildings in areas at risk of flooding and limiting pollution.

Since adaptation can generally be quite effective, the roundtable recommends the federal government invest in programs that help Canadians adapt and also boost the country’s paltry expertise and research in that area.

At the same time, Canada should do what it can to reduce emissions here and around the world, the report urges. Canada’s contributions to global warming are not large, but the effects of other countries’ emissions on Canada are astronomical, it points out.

Check out the rest of the article here and access the report here.

(Graphic credit: NRTEE)

Timothy Beatley on ‘Biophilic Cities’

From the California Academy of Sciences via Fora TV:

This event is the first part of a two-part discussion [Resilient Cities: Creating a Livable World] featuring Timothy Beatley, professor of sustainable communities at the University of Virginia, along with Dean Macris, former director of city planning for San Francisco, and Cathy Simon, design principal at Perkins+Will. Presented in partnership with Island Press.

From Reuters:

Painting black tar roofs with a white, solar-reflective coating is a low cost, quick and tangible way to reduce the risk of power grid ‘brown-outs’, save millions of dollars in energy costs, and curb climate change. The statistics are as simple as they are staggering: A roof covered with solar-reflective white paint reflects up to 90% of sunlight as opposed to the 20% reflected by a traditional black roof. On a 90°F day, a black roof can be up to 180°F. That heat has a major impact on interior building temperature, potentially heating your room to between 115 – 125°F. A white roof stays a cool 100°F. Plus the inside of the building stays cooler than the air outdoors, around 80°F in this example, reducing cooling costs.

White roofs also reduce the “urban heat island” effect in which temperatures rise in dense urban areas because of the proliferation of heat-radiating, black tar surfaces. For example, the Urban Heat Island effect causes New York City to be about 5 degrees warmer than surrounding suburbs and accounts for 5 to 10 percent of summer electricity use.

In New York City alone, 12% of all surfaces are rooftops. It’s estimated that implementing a white roof program in 11 metropolitan cities could save the United States 7 gigawatts in energy usage. That’s the equivalent of turning off 14 power plants, and a cost savings of $750 million per year.

Recently, former President Bill Clinton wrote in Newsweek, “Every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week.” The former president regularly touts the white roofs as one of those win-win scenarios that could also help create jobs and stimulate the economy.

…

If we were to coat 5 percent of rooftops per year worldwide, we would be finished by 2030. This would save the U.S. 24 billion metric tons in CO2. That happens to be exactly how the world as a whole emitted in 2010. So, in essence, this would be like turning the world off for an entire year — while also saving some money on the energy bills while doing it.

Check out the rest of the article here. You may also be interested in checking out the White Roof Project and Cool Roofs NYC; two efforts focused on “greening” New York’s rooftops. 

(Photo credit: Beyond Oil NYC)