planted city

Ultimately, the car-dominant model of urban and suburban development is not sustainable. Recognizing the limitations of this outmoded model is the first step in planning for our future of economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty. 

You can read and download the report here. 

Resilient Communities: ‘Surfing the Waves of Change’

From Cultivate Ireland via YouTube:

‘Surfing the Waves of Change’ is an animation exploring the idea of community resilience using the metaphor of a surfer to explain how communities can make themselves more resilient in these changing times. 

You can read more about the video over at Transition Voice. 

From Metro Vancouver: 

On June 25th, 2011, have your voice heard during a candid conversation on the future of our region and the impact of five global uncertainties – Energy, Food, Climate Change, Dematerialization, Security - that are profoundly shaping our lives.

Click here to watch the event on Livestream starting at 9 AM PDT and you can also follow it on Twitter using #MVSC11. Check out the program agenda here.

The devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the most extreme years on record, according to a new federal analysis.

Just shy of the halfway mark, 2011 has seen eight $1-billion-plus disasters, with total damages from wild weather at more than $32 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Agency officials said that total could grow significantly, since they expect this year’s North Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1, will be an active one.

Overall, NOAA experts said extreme weather events have grown more frequent in the United States since 1980. Part of that shift is due to climate change, said Tom Karl, director of the agency’s National Climatic Data Center.

“Extremes of precipitation are generally increasing because the planet is actually warming and more water is evaporating from the oceans,” he said. “This extra water vapor in the atmosphere then enables rain and snow events to become more extensive and intense than they might otherwise be.”

But for some kinds of extreme weather, teasing out a contribution from climate change is more difficult.

The second half of April brought a swarm of tornadoes that leveled parts of the Midwest, including the twister that killed 151 people in Joplin, Mo. So far, 2011 has seen the sixth-highest number of tornado deaths on record, prompting many people to wonder whether climate change has played a role. So far, scientists say there’s no good evidence for or against a climate change influence on tornado behavior.

Meanwhile, computer models predict that droughts — like those that have scorched large swaths of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona this year — will become stronger and more frequent as climate change continues. But because patterns of drought vary widely from decade to decade, that makes it “very difficult and unlikely that we’re going to be able to discern a human fingerprint, if there is one, on the drought record in the foreseeable future,” Karl said.

Read the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: NOAA)