sustainable transportation

A sustainable response to the global financial crisis?

A sustainable response to the global financial crisis?

The recent economic crisis was Western in origin but had global consequences. As trade finance dried up, global trade fell and demand collapsed. It revealed a divided and disconnected world.
But can we respond to this crisis in a sustainable way? Is it possible to achieve solid, environmentally friendly economic growth that raises living standards as equitably as possible and is consistent with the Millennium Development Goals? I believe so.

Growth can be green. High food and energy prices may pose economic and social problems but these can be addressed through environmentally friendly policies, increased investment in commodity-producing regions, and by green technology.

First we need to rebalance our global economy and introduce better regulation for the financial sector. Policymakers have been implementing an austerity agenda and ignoring growth, yet the euro crisis continues. Even when paying down debt there is much that we can do to boost demand and generate jobs. Debtor countries need to save more, while saver countries need to spend more. If only the debtor nations adjust, then a deflationary bias is built into the global economy.
Emerging economies need to switch from export-led to domestically driven growth. So we need to boost social safety nets to deter excess savings; support small and medium-sized firms that are the key to job creation; and develop deeper and broader capital markets to help underpin domestic-driven growth.

The financial crisis revealed the sheer scale of the shadow banking industry and the extent of inter-financial activity that had little economic benefit. But while regulators need to discourage such activities they also have to ensure that excessive regulation does not limit the banks’ ability to lend. Without trade finance, global trade suffers. The wrong type of regulation could encourage more businesses to shift into the shadow, unregulated industry, sowing the seeds of the next crisis.
So we need a common global financial agenda, led by the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board. We need to focus on three types of infrastructure: hard infrastructure – roads, transport links and so on; soft infrastructure – skills and education; and institutional infrastructure – the bodies the West takes for granted but which are still lacking across the emerging world.

We need institutions that are accountable and share common goals. This is no time for purely national political agendas; our response must be global to be truly sustainable.

Author: Dr Gerard Lyons, Chief Economist and Group Head, Global Research, Standard Chartered Bank; Member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Banking & Capital Markets.

http://forumblog.org/2012/05/a-sustainable-response-to-the-global-financial-crisis/

World’s largest bike-share system in China dwarfs popular U.S. program

World’s largest bike-share system in China dwarfs popular U.S. program

By Tyler Falk

Washington D.C.’s successful bike-share system, Capital Bikeshare, has been a hit recently (I wrote about it here). But to put its success into perspective take a look at the world’s largest bike-share system. Because while Capital Bikeshare is the largest bike-sharing system in the U.S., a massive bike-share system in the Chinese city of Hangzhou makes Capital Bikeshare look like it’s still riding with training wheels.

Bike sharing system in Guangzhou, China, photo by dls14

In the city of nearly 7 million, the bike-share system — started in 2008 — has more than 50,000 bikes. By comparison, Capital Bikeshare — started in 2010 — has about 1,100.
This is not to get down on Capital Bikeshare, only to show that the U.S. cities still have a long way to go in order to catch-up with the world’s most bike-friendly cities.

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http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/cities/worlds-largest-bike-share-system-in-china-dwarfs-popular-us-program/611

Bixi bike sharing in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, photo by andy54321

Cycling to Sustainability in Amsterdam

Cycling to Sustainability in Amsterdam

By Ralph Buehler,

Assistant Professor,Virginia Tech and John Pucher, Professor, Rutgers University

 

Introduction: The many dimensions of cycling’s sustainability

There are many good reasons to encourage more cycling. It causes virtually no noise or air pollution and consumes far less non-renewable resources than any motorized transport mode. The only energy cycling requires is provided directly by the traveler, and the very use of that energy offers valuable cardiovascular exercise. Cycling requires only a small fraction of the space needed for the use and parking of cars. Moreover, cycling is economical, costing far less than both the private car and public transport, both in direct user costs and public infrastructure costs. Because it is affordable by virtually everyone, cycling is among the most equitable of all transport modes. In short, it is hard to beat cycling when it comes to environmental, social and economic sustainability.
This article examines how Amsterdam has consistently improved cycling conditions over many decades and succeeded at raising even further the share of trips by bike. As a result, it has become one of Europe’s most sustainable cities, offering convenient, safe, and socially acceptable alternatives to car dependence.
Unlike cities in North America, all segments of society cycle in the Netherlands: women as much as men, all age groups, and all income groups. The universality of cycling in the Netherlands highlights the extraordinary degree of social sustainability that bicycling makes possible.

Amsterdam: Cycling Capital of Europe

Bikes have shaped the image of Amsterdam to such an extent that, for many people throughout the world, Amsterdam is almost synonymous with cycling. In 2008, cycling accounted for 38% of all vehicle trips—a bike mode share unheard of in other European cities of comparable size (City of Amsterdam, 2009). With a population of 743,000, Amsterdam is the largest city in the Netherlands. The greater Amsterdam region has 1.5 million inhabitants and is situated at the northern end of the Randstad, the Netherlands’ largest urrban agglomeration.
Amsterdam’s city administration estimates that there were 600,000 bikes in Amsterdam in 2006, about 0.75 bikes per inhabitant (City of Amsterdam, 2007). Amsterdam’s topography and spatial development patterns are ideal for cycling. The city is mostly flat and densely built-up. Mixed use neighborhoods keep trip distances relatively short. Furthermore, many small bike bridges and bike short cuts make it easy to navigate the city center by bike. By comparison, car use is difficult in the central city. There are few car parking spaces, and many cul-de-sacs and one way streets hinder car travel.

 

Cycling in Amsterdam, image by Stephen Trainor

Bicycling in Amsterdam, image by poul.iversen

World Future Scenarios

World Future Scenarios

by Adin Kachisi

If we are lucky the recent protests and growing dissatisfaction with Wall Street, the banking system and current economic systems disproportionately benefiting a few on top at the expense of the whole planet, could give birth to a new future. The next decade beginning now will most likely be marked by significant decisions and bold actions to shape the future of the world. Failure to choose a meaningful path in the next decade could mean inescapable doom for humanity.

It is clear that the next few decades and century will not be just a continuity of the predominant social-economic system we have today, characterised by high consumption and business as usual. Five possible scenarios are visible when observing current trends and possible turns, namely collapse, technological solutions, return to paradise, sustainability and a combination scenario.

i. Collapse: the first possible scenario is a collapse of society as we know it.
This future involves humanity contunuing to consume resources as now or at an accelerated rate due to population increase, more destruction of the environment due to agriculture, industry, habitation, and pollution, continued migrations to urban cities for economic reasons, and climatic change marked by more floods, rising sea levels, and other natural disasters. After several decades of 'business as usual' the interlocked systems that maintain industrial societies or modern habitats would begin to fail. Climatic change would alter to environment radically, reducing habitable spaces; population would be so high and unmanagable, leaving billions to starve and be shelterless; fossil fuels would deplete resulting in serious energy crisis, because of energy crisis production of many goods would stop resulting in empty shelves and empty bellies. All the problems would then culminate wars and barbaric violence for survival, with no livestock for meat, no vegitables or grain for food, and no drinkable water, humans would probably turn to canibalism. The end result would inevitably involve a major "die-off" of human population turning human habitats into post-apocalyptic landscape.

However, for this crisis & conflict scenario to play some prerequisites have to be met. The powers interesting in 'business as usual or blind consumerism have to prevail over the emerging ideas of sustainability. Presently, the dominant paradigm running the planet is consumption and profit over ecology, there is a broad base of political and business leadership unwilling to recognise climatic change and or the urgency to preserve the environment. Unless this changes, the environmental destruction will continue to increase at an accelerated rate making human habitats and the planet as a whole uninhabitable.

ii. Technological solutions: this second scenario plays out if human technology can achieve exponential growth or leaps in the coming few years. Considering the past leaps or jumps of technology in the past decades, it is a viable possiblity for new technological miracles to change the direction of the world.
Geo-engineering is one sphere where progress could result in solution reversing climatic change and repairing the damaged ecosystem. Progress in other areas like nanotechnology could also reverse heavy reliance on natural resources for the production of goods. We could see technologies allowing us to effectively recycle all used materials after producing them with renewable energies at zero pollution or impact to the environment.

Technological breakthroughs in health and genetic engineering could also change the direction of human civilization. The improved quality of life in the modern era has increased human life expectancy but has also resulted in increased numbers of old citizens considered to be dependants. Advances in genetic engineering could trnasform high life expectancy to delayed aging and more years of youthfulness. In other words, aging may be delayed from 50 years of age to 80, making an 80 year old person as youthful as a 40 or 50 year old. The production of G.M.O foods may also be transfromed into something less suspicious but very useful like (GMO) Genetically Modified Organics. These crops would yield high quantity nutritious produce without destroying the soil or polluting the environment or yield.

Technological development could also solve our reliance on fossil fuels through the introduction of zero emission or renewable energy vehicles, or even totally get rid of such vehicles by introducing displacement machines capable of instantly teleporting humans or goods from one location to another with zero pollution or resource consumption.

iii. Return to paradise: this future scenario involves a return to pre-industrial paradise. Faced with current economic failures and growing environmental problems, humanity or large portions of it might just withdraw from modern life and retreat to the countryside, villages or jungles to basically relive the ancient past. The intension of such a move will be to allow the ecosystem to recover from the industrial assault. However, this solution would not work for a large population of 7 billion people. The planet does not have enough farming land for 7 billion people, and even if it did such mass farming would further demage the ecosystem. As for hunting and gathering, there is barely anything in the forests today to gather and live by, and not enough animals to hunt. Therefore a return to pre-industrial paradise would result in failure, tribal wars, wars for food and land, and mass starvation.

iv. Sustainability: the fourth future scenario of sustainability is a very possible scenario. There is currently a growing interest in sustainable living and preserving the environment. The major environmental problems we face today is because our current world paradigm is consumer capitalism based on the notion of limitless expansion on a finite planet. Our modern cultures have been evolving in that environment and within habits of taking from the environment without giving back. However, our population and consumption habits have grown way beyond our planet's capacity to sustain.

As Graeme Taylor puts it in 'At the Cutting Edge of Evolution', "..Humanity has no choice: if global civilization is to survive, it must evolve into a completely new type of sociatal system. A consumer society cannot be transformed into a conserver society without structural change."
Sustainable planning, lifestyles, economics, production and technologies will be the only way humans can survive on a planet in peril. For this to work, large populations of humanity will have to force the political and business leadership to adopt sustainability as a new paradigm of operation.

v. Combination scenario: the last and most likely scenario to play out may be a combination of parts of several scenarios. Firstly, an increase in ecological problems and more collapses in economic systems will force the majority of the world to understand the reality of the ecological crisis humanity is facing. With such clarity the will put pressure of their political and business leaders to implement reforms and new policies towards sustainability for survival. Governments will then put policies and rules as well as systems in favour of sustainability. The news systems will be aided by new technologies promoting sustainable lifestyle and clean energies. The end result will be a paradigm shift towards sustainability and restoration of the ecosystem.

Munich's mobility becomes more eco-friendly (Germany)

Thanks to a sustained effort in smart mobility planning including access restriction and improvement of cycling and walking conditions, the city of Munich evolves towards a more sustainable mobilty pattern.



The mobility of the people of Munich (Germany) becomes more and more eco-friendly. The share of motorised individual traffic is shrinking, especially in favour of bicycles. Compared to other cities the share of car drivers (27 %) and car passengers (10 %) of the total traffic is quite small. Fortunately the share of bicycles has increased from 10% to 14% since 2002. Public transport is frequently and willingly used with a total share of 21%. Notably high is the rate of pedestrians (28%).

Among others this fortunate development of Munich’s modal split is based on a successful mobility and land use policy. The strategy behind the success is a combination of access restrictions for cars and appeals for eco-friendly mobility. Therefore, the municipality of Munich tries to offer the best conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. Short distances between different traffic targets (home, work, shopping, leisure time) should contribute to encourage people to walk or to cycle. In the course of eco-friendly aims, Munich wants to become Germany’s capital of cyclists. To reach this goal and to attract even more people to cycling, cycle paths have been extended, one way streets opened for cyclists, additional bicycle tracks built and a uniform guidance system has been implemented.

Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents

Cultural Evolution and Its Discontents

by Adin Kachisi

Even though humanity celebrates its cultural artifacts as evidence of heights of human evolution, we should also take cognisance of the fact that very same cultural evolution responsible for our advanced civilizations is also the abattoir where civilizations meet their demise. Today, probably more than ever, humanity stands at the crossroads where the direction of our current cultural evolution if unperturbed could lead to the existinction not only of the human race but of most species on the planet.

It is of interest to see how the word culture is connected to the word cultivate and the word cult. Cultivation or tillage has connections to theadvent of what might be considered as high or advanced culture with the advent of the agriculture in human history about 10,000 years ago. From this period on we see humans creating permanent settlements, organized into villages, then later towns, cities and states. These organized communities were fertile grounds for the development of cultural aspects like rituals, religions, values, beliefs, art, governments, laws, writing, education and eventually advanced
science and technology.

As for the less positive word ‘cult’, it is usually associated with devotion, often blind following. A link between the word cult and culture would imply a less favorable aspect of culture and cultural
evolution. Characteristic of all cultures are aspects like blind belief without the need for rational explanation or evidence, as well as cultural biases in favor of one’s culture and against other cultures and those who belong to those cultures. I often see how people in America casually make negative jocks about people of other cultures like the Mexicans, the Chinese and the French. At more
serious level, cultural biases with their cult followings of people within those cultures is sometimes used for war, violence and discrimination. I doubt if it was very difficult for a few instigators to exploit political tensions and cultural biases in order to instigate the mass murders between Hutus and Tutsis resulting in about 1 million deaths, and nothing to be gained. The current religious and cultural cold war between the Western world and the Moslem world is basically a conflict between the Western Judeo-Christian cults versus the Moslem cult. The blind followers in each cult will easily swallow any propaganda against the other cult without need for critical thought or meaningful
evidence.

Today we also see how cultural aspects of world cultures in particular the Western world, and more recently the East have become a stumbling block in the ‘Great Transition’ towards creating sustainable societies. The modern world has given birth to a new breed of cross-cultural and
cross-geographical culture called consumerism. The problems of global climatic change and environmental degradation are for most part products of Western, post-industrial, capitalist culture. The Western world and to some degree its loyal disciples, the rest of the world, are deeply embedded in unsustainable lifestyles. This is evident in suburban sprawl with its attendant commercial
distribution channels like shopping malls, fast food outlets and other markets for the mass consumers.

In the global cultural arena of consumerism the main players are the corporations, mass media and the consumers. The corporate cultural role is mass production of goods and profit maximization. The media cultural role is the dissemination of mass propaganda, disinformation, perception management and the promotion of trends and habits conducive for the expansion of consumer culture. The consumer cultural role is to consume as much as possible. These consumers having been cultured or brainwashed by the media to believe that their worth depends on how many toys they have or how much they consume, they helplessly follow the impulse to buy what they do not need despite
the financial and ecological costs of such habits.

The average rate at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like
plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. In its September 2008 issue, the journal Energy Policy found that around 1/3rd of Chinese carbon dioxide emissions were due to the production of exports and that it is mostly the developed world consuming these.

As Jared Diamond puts it in the article ‘What’s Your Consumption Factor’, “...a real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans.”

It will take another cultural evolution to evolve out of our consumption culture. A change in culture is inline with the current environmental theory and American Pragmatism, as stated by Eric Retan that,
“…the contemporary consumerist worldview is largely to blame for our current environmental crisis, and any solution to that crisis must be driven by a change in worldview” (Reitan, 1998, p.2)
However, as Richard Robbins states, such a cultural revolution may be a difficult change to achieve, “…it may be the most difficult to change; our consumption patterns are so much a part of our lives that to change them would require a massive cultural overhaul, not to mention severe economic dislocation.”

The survival imperative of our species needs humanity today to emberace a new zeitgeist or spirit of the times, to evolve us out of the cultural evolution that has led us to the culture of mindless consumption. Only through a new cultural evolution to sustainability can we escape the impending ecological apocalypse.

Biggest jump ever seen in global warming gases

By SETH BORENSTEIN - AP Science Writer | AP – Fri, Nov 4, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.

It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.

Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.

"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."

Boden said that in 2010 people were traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.

India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.
"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said Thursday. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."

In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.

Even though global warming skeptics have attacked the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.
Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme."

"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."

But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8 percent below 1990 levels. The U.S. did not ratify the agreement.

In 1990, developed countries produced about 60 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50 percent, Reilly said.

"We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."

http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-jump-ever-seen-global-warming-gases-183955211.html

Sustainable Urbanism

Doug Farr is an architect and planner who wrote the book Sustainable Design: Urban Design with Nature. In this talk, Farr discusses how LEED certification of buildings can only do so much since it doesn’t take into account how buildings are integrated sustainably with its surroundings. He argues that we need to think differently about we organize our cities – more densely in more compact, complete, and walkable neighborhoods – to design sustainability into the way we live. The video is an hour and 20 minutes long, but may be worth it for the ideas and case studies presented about planning and architecture design.

Introduction

Ecological, economic, and social factors , as well as the change in climatic conditions, resource distribution and globalization will lead 75% of the world's population to live in cities and urban settlements within the next 25 years. Such a trend and the current global state of urban life calls for new planning tools through an interdisciplinary approach to understand and reinvent urban habitats to meet the growing challenges.
Cities are the single most critical issue of global sustainability because while they cover only 2% of the earth’s surface, they consume 70% of the world’s resources. Moreover, in virtually all of the developing countries and most significantly in the more advancing economies of China and India there is also a vast rural to urban migration taking place. The lure of jobs and an opportunity for a higher standard of living are generating population shifts of as many as 1.2 million per week.

These pressures of urban growth have only expanded already overextended inefficient existing infrastructures and have become an overload of congestion, pollution, depletion of natural resources and an insatiable demand for energy.

Unsustainable Urban habitats :

Modern cities are examples of unsustainable systems