If you set the bar low enough...

I appreciate where the comments of Martin Chavez (Executive Director of ICLEI in the USA) are coming from but I think it is just too much to have yet more absurdly optimistic views of what was achieved at Cancun.

Talking about "this year’s remarkable achievement" just distracts from the total failure of Copenhagen and onwards to develop a legally enforceable mechanism to reduce carbon. And please save us all from the notion that this sets the scene for "the prospects for further climate action during next year’s Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa"! Those of us who have been long-term travelers on the COP road have heard that one far too many times.


This is not to say that diplomacy does not inch forward or that the recognition of local governments in a new way is not of note. Great! We have been battling for that for many years! And so...well, frankly, he ends his piece with "We simply don’t have much time to waste". If I had a dollar for every time I have heard that phrase at the end of similarly over-spun COP summaries, then I would be a wealthy man.

So, what are we supposed to do with "indications of risk"?

An ABC report on a series of maps released by the Federal Government showing parts of Bass Coast Shire could be inundated if sea levels rise by 1.1 metres shows how this is always a scary exercise.

I am not sure about the spin that we then have to face from the council's planning and environment director, Hannah Duncan-Jones:

"It accords with what we expected and I guess that certainly when you look at them they can look quite dramatic and it's important to consider that what they're doing is providing a representation and that these are not maps that should be utilised for detailed planning purposes, they're to provide an indication of risk," she said

Thinking aloud on the screen

I like this type of simulation and can really see it prospering in the future...

Brand: new, old and plan B

Stewart Brand (one of my heroes) has an interesting interview in the Guardian today and the money quote:

Environmentalists have been thinking about global warming for longer than most and so we've got used to the idea that mitigation, cutting back on greenhouse gases, is taking way longer than expected and, in fact, may not occur at all for decades. And therefore there needs to be a plan B. If you go to some kind of climate engineering you don't want to do it half-baked, you want to know what you're doing – and that requires research at scale, which hasn't occurred yet.

New survey shows that lousy surveys are, well, lousy

Another poorly-designed survey (reported in Digital Journal) and so the results are as expected...

Two-thirds of US cities and counties consider the environment and energy conservation a priority, but far fewer have taken steps to address those issues. And four out of five people do not consider climate change to be a high priority.

This one was from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) in the USA, which is usually a fabulous resource. But one look at the actual pdf shows that the old garbage in, garbage out still applies. Surveys like this are worse than worthless, as they mislead and provide poor information for decision-makers.

The slow train crash...

Jonathon Porrit keeps an eye on how the new UK Government is going - and in particular the Lib Dems via a speech by their leader to the Party - and worries about the lack of focus (let alone anything) about climate change:

We’re just a few weeks away from the next big climate change conference in Cancun in Mexico (the near-inevitable failure of which will essentially result in the demise of the Kyoto Treaty post-2012, representing a massive set back in terms of addressing climate change), and the Deputy Prime Minister has got diddly-squat to say.

First a baby will be born in one, then a baby will be conceived and born...

(AP) BEIJING -- A massive traffic jam in north China that stretches for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark on Tuesday stems from road construction in Beijing that won't be finished until the middle of next month, an official said.

Bumper-to-bumper gridlock spanning for 60 miles (100 kilometers) with vehicles moving little more than a half-mile (one kilometer) a day at one point has improved since this weekend, said Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city's Traffic Management Bureau general office.

Some drivers have been stuck in the jam for five days, China Central Television reported Tuesday. But Zhang said he wasn't sure when the situation along the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway would return to normal.

The traffic jam started Aug. 14 on a stretch of the highway that is frequently congested, especially after large coalfields were discovered in Inner Mongolia, Zhang said. Traffic volume has increased 40 percent every year.

New technologies - cement trials

From the ABC:

Council workers will build a footpath in Toowoomba on Queensland's Darling Downs this morning using a new environmentally-friendly form of concrete. Local firm Wagners has developed the material using waste from coal-fired power stations and iron production and says the footpath is the first commercial trial of the product.

Project manager Tom Glasby says every tonne of traditional cement needed for concrete production produces a tonne of carbon emissions. He says the new concrete produces 90 per cent less carbon emissions than traditional forms of the building material. "We take these two mineral by-product waste materials, being ground-up slag and fly-ash, and we actually use them as the cementing agent in our concrete," he said. "It is also a very low energy product."

A bit more than a blow I would have thought

From the ABC:

Geraldton Greenough's image as an environmentally sustainable city has been dealt a blow after the local council put plans to introduce kerbside recycling on ice.

The council has spent nearly $390,000 on investigative works but this week voted not to proceed with the initiative.
...As a result of the decision, the council will forfeit nearly $600,000 in State Government funding.

 But they haven't yet told the people who do their web-site....

There are a limited number of recycling options available within the City at the moment. In the near future, the City is planning to introduce Kerbside Recycling.

Interesting China focus on cities

From The People's Daily Online:

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) launched a national low-carbon province and low-carbon city experimental project in Beijing on Aug. 18. The project will be implemented in five provinces, namely Guangdong, Liaoning, Hubei, Shaanxi and Yunnan, and in eight cities, namely Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang and Baoding.

Relevant government officials of those provinces and cities have promised to research and develop a low-carbon development plan, accelerate the establishment of an industry structure featuring low carbon emissions and actively promote low-carbon lifestyles and consumption patterns in order to help tackle global climate change.

Not mad just opportunistic

 ABC NEWS reports on a new urban event and picks an angle that was so expected:

Tasmania's workplace safety authority is seeking guarantees yesterday's wind turbine failure in central Hobart will not happen again.

Less than a month after installation, wind turbines on Hobart's Marine Board building were shut down yesterday after they started spinning out of control in strong winds. Police closed streets surrounding the building amid concerns the blades were coming loose. A spokesman for the company which installed the turbines, Rob Manson, says the incident was caused by a brake failure and there was no threat to public safety.

Roy Ormerod from Workplace Standards says some questions need to be answered. "We'll be in contact with the building owners and we'll be asking them for information on what caused the failure," he said. Mr Manson says the company will conduct an internal investigation.

Hobart alderman Darlene Haigh says wind turbines should never have been erected in the city centre.
Alderman Haigh opposed their installation on heritage and public safety grounds She says concerns were raised on an environmental website. "[It] said that they were safe out further from the city but not where there was high populations of people nearby because of the possibility of a blade dislodging and I do recall at the time that a lot of people thought I was quite mad," Alderman Haigh said.

"Everyone else is doing stuff with all the new technology, so why shouldn't they?"

Perhaps not the rationale... and that notion of embracing "the technological age"?

THE Tweed Shire Council is gearing up to embrace the technological age, with the launch of a smart phone application to allow ratepayers access to key council information.
The software, developed in collaboration with a private mobile phone technology firm, will be launched at the weekend to coincide with Local Government Week celebrations and a technological overhaul of the shire council's e-planning system.

Getting citizen feedback the hard way

Grist notes the irony:

After taking heat for lack of bike-infrastructure support -- what mayor doesn't get flack for this? -- Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villariagosa climbed on a bike for the first time in years last Saturday for a ride to the beach. Within 30 minutes a taxi driver pulled out in front of him on Venice Boulevard, knocking the mayor to the pavement. He hit his head -- he was wearing a helmet -- and broke his right elbow.

How will China's citizens get to work?

ClimateWire asks: As the world hurtles toward 2 billion cars, an increasingly important issue for the climate will be this: How will China's citizens get to work?

With their rising incomes and access to freshly paved roads, many will be tempted to emulate Americans and buy cars. Some will ride the gleaming rail networks funded by Beijing. But in the past two years, China has also become the world's fastest-growing market for high-speed city buses.
In February, the southern city of Guangzhou rolled out China's latest effort, a 14-mile stretch of a main road striped with bus-only lanes down the middle. The sleek buses race between raised stations that resemble train stops. Ridership has already shattered the figures of other bus systems in Asia. Now the system beats out the ridership of every metro line in mainland China except Beijing's.

Parking - wow!

What is old is new again

Didn't local governments used to do this with non-renewables before having their powers taken off them and centralised?  ZDNet reports:

The (UK) government wants to overturn a ban which prevents councils selling renewable energy to the grid, energy minister Chris Huhne announced on Wednesday.

The Local Government ACT 1976, which currently prevents councils from selling electrcity, will be amended, said Huhne in a statement.

"It's ridiculous that the 1976 Local Government Act prevents councils from selling electricity from local wind turbines, or from anaerobic digestion," said Huhne. "I want to see this repealed and by the end of the year I hope local authorities will be able to sell electricity from renewables – generating revenue to help local services and keep council tax down."

Ducking the wind-blown spit

The excellent series in Grist continues and Terry Tamminen sums it up again:

We haven't really been focused on the price of carbon; we've been focused on reducing carbon. And if that's really our goal, as opposed to being in love with any one policy at any one level of government, then there's a lot of work going on, which has been successful and continues to be successful, that we need to defend and strengthen. That's where our time is better spent, rather than spitting into the wind

The question: what now for a carbon price given the US stalemate?

The question is from Grist and a great response from Schwartzenegger's former advisor:

Terry Tamminen: I would stop focusing on the glass that's empty and focus instead on the one that's full. We already have a price on carbon in 10 Northeastern states, at least as it pertains to the electricity sector, under RGGI [Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative]. We are in the final stages of designing a similar cap-and-trade system in the majority of the Western states, and the Midwestern states have said they'll copy what we do. So by 2012, regardless of what Congress does, if we support these state actions -- which are much more deeply rooted and have a lot more political support and practical demonstration of success -- we are much more likely to have a price on carbon in the U.S. in the near-term.

Update: that pesky TWS split

From last week (yep, I have been on holidays with my family):

Members of The Wilderness Society have tonight voted in a new Management Committee for the organization, one committed to ending the internal conflict and taking the Society forward.  
 
In a re-run 2009 Annual General Meeting, hundreds of members gathered in Adelaide and hundreds more participated by phone across the country to hold an election for the Committee. 

The 2009 AGM was required to be re-run after the Tasmanian Supreme Court ruled the previous AGM, secretly held in November 2009 and organised by the former Management Committee, was invalid as it was inadequately notified. The meeting last night was jointly called and organised by all parties within the Wilderness Society, and the outcome represents a binding resolution to a damaging chapter in the organisation’s history. 

But you should hear the whinging when Melburnians drink coffee in New York

From blogger Yglesias riffing of the Millenium series:

The Swedes are actually a bit less coffee-mad than the Finns, Norwegians, Danes, or Icelanders but as you can see here all the Nordic peoples drink a ton of coffee, in the Swedish case a bit less than twice as much per capita as Americans do. The Södermalm area of Stockholm where Mikael Blonkvist and Lisbeth Salander live and Millenium and Milton Security are headquartered is just littered with coffee houses like nothing I’ve ever seen in America ... Personally, I drink way more coffee than the average American and find this aspect of Swedish life congenial. Even I, however, had to balk at the extreme quantity of coffee I was served in Finland where consumption is absolutely off the charts.

Coastal erosion laws in NSW rankle councils

The private versus public debate - and who pays of course:

New legislation on the management of coastal erosion has once again stirred debate over the amount of control landowners should be given to protect their properties.

With three-quarters of Australians living on the coast, the issue is being discussed at all levels of government.

In New South Wales, the State Government is putting together new legislation which could - for the first time - give landowners the right to erect emergency barriers to shield their properties.

The legislation is aimed at preventing court cases similar to one that played out recently in Byron Bay on the NSW north coast, where landowner John Vaughan took the council to court for the right to defend his land.

Sydney opens Australia’s first electric car charging station | Travel News

I remember the "if you build it, they will come" approach from the nineties, but I suspect that this is a bit more focused and likely to be more successful - from two days ago:

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP opened the first public electric car charging station in Australia...

The on-street charging spot is located in Derby Place, Glebe. It is managed by ChargePoint and installed by Visionstream. The station uses 100 per cent Origin GreenPower and can recharge converted plug-in hybrids such as a Toyota Prius in three hours.

Ms Moore said that Sydney has joined other cities around the world that have installed electric vehicle charging stations, such as Amsterdam, Houston, San Francisco, London and Vancouver. Over 700,000 vehicles travel throughout the Local Government Area in Sydney every day, contributing significantly to pollution, smog, greenhouse gases, noise and congestion.

Vehicles that are part of the car share scheme GoGet, such as the converted Prius, have an electric motor range of 30kms and cover two kilometres more than 80 per cent of GoGet’s regular trips. Moore said that electric vehicles contribute zero exhaust emissions and added that a shared vehicle substituted up to 10 privately owned cars.

Sydney opens Australia’s first electric car charging station | Travel News

Another good reason to live in the suburbs

Try charging your new electric vehicle out the front of 60 apartments....

Scotland’s large number of tenement flats and lack of adequate off-street parking will hamper drivers switching to electric cars, a report predicts.

Environmental charity WWF has concluded that, in order to meet Scottish Government targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, at least 290,000 petrol-driven cars will need to be replaced with electric ones by 2020, representing one in 10 vehicles on Scotland’s roads.

The charity identified an equally challenging goal of ensuring electric vehicles comprise one in five cars sold by the same date in order to help bring down total carbon dioxide emissions by 42%.

But the predominance of tenement housing in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen represents a significant hurdle to achieving this green revolution, the WWF said.

It pointed to research which found that domestic charging of cars represented the most effective and efficient means of powering private vehicles as they did not require the installation of any additional infrastructure. Large cities represent the ideal place to roll-out electric vehicle technology as many of the trips are short distance, which they can handle without running out of power.

However, the proportion of homes with garages or driveways where cars could be plugged into the mains is limited in Scotland. Glasgow had the lowest rate, with only 22% of homes having access to off-street parking; in Edinburgh it was less than a third; in Aberdeen, fewer than half of homes had off-street parking .

Putting up publicly available on-street charging points is an “expensive solution” but one that local authorities and government would have to consider, WWF said...

It is thought some investment for on-street charging facilities may be available from electricity companies which will benefit from related sales. However, it is unlikely this will be sufficient without public investment, industry sources claimed.

One step forwards, two steps back

From the ABC:

Adelaide City Council has agreed to remove a $400,000 bicycle lane from Sturt Street in the city because of a community campaign. The concrete bikeway was built last year between Whitmore Square and West Terrace to separate cyclists from motorists. The council will now spend another $100,000 removing the lane.

Adelaide MP Rachel Sanderson says the lane is dangerous for pedestrians and bad for business. "People couldn't get parks, there was a downturn in their [business] turnover," she said.

Jeff Smith, who has a town planning business in Sturt Street, says cyclists have not been using the lane. "The cycling public wasn't familiar with the concept and they continuously rode on the carriageway," he said.

City Councillor Richard Hayward says removal work will start as soon as possible. "There's a whole raft of reasons why it wasn't successful," he said.

"We trialed it, it didn't work, we made a decision in the best interests of the responses to the stakeholders and that is to return it to how it was before."

Yikes! What is "top-down planning" code for?

Andres Duany is the "father of new urbanism" - a positive thread in planning for the last half century or so - and yet he sounds not only like a grumpy old man ("There's this generation who grew up in the suburbs, ...They have this techno music, and the food cheapens, and they run in packs, great social packs, and they take over a place and ruin it and go somewhere else") but his reflections on democracy in this piece are a little strained:

While democracy does most things well, I think we need to confront the fact that it does not make the best cities. And that the cities that were great were rather top-down. You know--Paris and Rome, the grid of Manhattan. What would those have been like if there hadn't been some top-down stuff? Every landowner would have done a separate little pod subdivision. That's one of the things that's naive about Americans--extremely naive, I find, as an outsider having lived in places that are possibly less democratic, like Spain. This idea that you have an individual right to do whatever you want with your land is very democratic, but the result is pretty questionable.

You want WHAT job?

The countdown to Mexico starts...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday appointed Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica as the new U.N. climate chief. She is an expert on climate negotiations and the daughter of the country's former president.

Figueres, who has been a member of Costa Rica's negotiating team on climate change since 1995, will replace Yvo de Boer as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The wet trousers test

Car owners are waiting at the entrance of a underground parking lot, hoping their Audi, Volvo, BMW etc could float themselves out.

A Guangzhou blogger tells:

How to decide whether a country is a developed country or a developing one? Taiwanese essayist and cultural critic Lung Ying-tai proposed a simple way: when there is a rainstorm that last for 3 hours or so, take a walk, if you find the legs of your trousers are wet but not muddy, the traffic is slow but not jammed, the streets are slippery but not waterlogged, this is probably a developed country; on the other hand if you find that standing water is everywhere, that teapot and comb are floating out of shops to the middle of the street,that children are net fishing over the crossroad, you are probably looking at a developing country. Developing countries may have the money to build sky scrapers, but they care less to develop their drainage system; you can see sky scrapers but not the underground sewer, a good rain storm can lift the veil.
According to this criterion, Guangzhou City is not so mush a cosmopolis as it claims itself to be after all. An exceptionally severe rainstorm struck the whole Guangzhou city during midnight on May 6th, and last 3 to 4 hours, resulting 118 waterlogging points 89 of which are new, and 44 of them are heavily flooded.The average rainfall of the city is 107.7 mm with downtown average at 128.45 mm. The heaviest rain fell in a reservoir in Baiyun District with 232 mm fall.

Another take on sustainability

From the ever helpful Chinahush:

May 6, another Foxconn worker leaped to his death, and this is jump number 7 since January, another suicide, again jumping off a building, again at Foxconn. People call it the “7 consecutive jumps”. I also recall writing about an incident last July, a Chinese worker at Foxconn committed suicide after iPhone prototype went missing. Everyone wants to know why so many Foxconn workers are jumping to their death, 7 of them just this year? What was behind the incidents? Is it coincidence or inevitable?...In an interview, Foxconn spokesman Liu Kun admitted that the management has loopholes, but facing the huge number of 420,000 employees in Shenzhen, and as for why the spate of such incidents; how to avoid similar incidents from occurring, he also seemed to be helpless.

Liu Kun:

Do we really have preventions in place? Can we really touch 420,000 people’s heart? As a business, we are not capable of doing this. And I don’t know what reason will cause the eighth jump.

But yikes:

As I am writing this, jump number 8 happened today, May 11, a Foxconn female employee jumped off 8th floor of a building to her death…

Where are they now?

Business Wire reports:

"Living Cities (www.livingcities.org), the long-standing, urban-focused philanthropic collaborative of 22 of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions, is proud to announce its latest Distinguished Urban Fellow, Greg Nickels, the former Mayor of Seattle. With his own accomplished record of public service, Mayor Nickels will work closely with Living Cities’ CEO and Board of Directors to shape the organization’s expanded and ambitious green economy agenda aimed at helping America’s cities lay the foundation for a new green economy that includes expanding opportunities for low-income people."

What IS going on in NZ?

Lots of Local Government people privately bemoan the amount of consultation that occurs - often with the same small groups of people in their local communities. But to legislate consultation in the proposed manner in NZ is simply mad. A local resident activist describes the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill as a:

"... desire to strip local communities of their consultation rights. The Bill goes on to say that an intention is to “remove unnecessary consultation”, particularly around Long Term Council Community Plans. These are the 10-year plans that set the strategic direction and imperatives for Councils; a great many Wellington community and private groups currently provide input into how these are shaped by the Wellington City Council and the Regional Council.

Under the proposals in the Bill, the community consultation for LTCCPs would be completely removed – and then in a move that would make George Orwell gasp in admiration, Councils are constrained by the Bill to only being able to undertake activities that are included in the LTCCP."

One way to deal with cross-mandates in government

The Geelong Advertiser reports that a directly elected Mayor in Geelong is unlikely:

"BRUMBY Government Local Government Minister Richard Wynne has tried to shut down the push to get a directly elected mayor for Geelong. The Minister told a room full of city leaders yesterday that the push was not on the state's agenda despite a concerted effort by lobby groups such as the Committee for Geelong.

The Minister was asked by Committee for Geelong head Michael Betts whether the state would introduce an elected mayor to break a perceived power vacuum at City Hall. Mr Wynne said if the serving councillors wanted ``continuity with leadership'' they had the ability under the Local Government Act to select a mayor for two years.

Mayors in Geelong have traditionally been selected for one-year terms by fellow councillors. "And then if they are happy with the performance they can vote them in for another two years,'' he said."

The Wilderness Society splits gets worse

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a really bad split in The Wilderness Society. So what is going on? Is it generational (the management is older and made up of long-time activists), financial (it is still very well-funded I understand), ideological (the management is seen as not radical enough)..? The meeting last night looks set for even more pain at a time when the green movement needs to be working on angles for the upcoming Federal election.

"One of Australia's largest green groups, The Wilderness Society, has torn itself in half, with two factions claiming to be the legitimate managers of the 46,000-member organisation.

At a dramatic series of meetings in Canberra last night, a splinter group protesting the performance of the society's long-standing management team and its executive director, Alec Marr, stormed out of a special general meeting and held a separate meeting 700 metres down the road to elect a new management committee."

But they can see over the fence as they fall

Risk management is always an issue (in this case a "safety, privacy and liability issue") but boy this is taking it a bit far, no?

THE oldest is 14, the youngest only four. But that hasn't stopped a group of neighbourhood friends from taking on the Brisbane City Council.

After more than 18 months working on their dream four-level treehouse, the group of more than a dozen Newmarket children are fighting to keep council from tearing down their project.

"It's our clubhouse. We made it from scratch," said one child, 6, whose parent did not want them to be named.

"We all did it together."

Chairman of City Business and Local Asset Services David McLachlan said the structure, which is built on council land in Spencer Park, is a "safety, privacy and liability issue". "The top platform is some 4m off the ground," Cr McLachlan said.

"This is close to a property and the platform is built so they can overlook a neighbour's property, so there is a privacy issue."

More than 18 children under the age of 14 live in Market St and the treehouse has become the centre of street parties, birthdays and other get-togethers.

"What kind of over-regulated society do we live in, when kids can't play in their tree house?" asked Nicholas Edwards, 12. "Mum didn't tell me to say that."

Mum Lisa Palu said the treehouse had brought families together.

"All the dads met each other through it and helped the kids with the construction," she said. "Liability is a serious issue for council. I know that. But what we want is the opportunity to meet with council. Come and talk to us so the children understand."

Councillor for Central Ward David Hinchliffe said the structure should stay.

The treehouse is due to be torn down by the end of the week.

Just in case you missed it....

A new role that I am taking on that was picked up (slow news day) by the business section of The Age in Melbourne and some bloggers...

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has established a new task group to encourage local councils to take up the green building agenda. The Local Government Task Group (LGTG) has been formed to engage with local councils on green building issues, identify opportunities and barriers and provide guidance on the use of the Green Star rating system for buildings.

According to Chief Executive of the GBCA, Romilly Madew, many local governments – including the Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth city councils – are already fully engaged members of the GBCA.

“Local governments have been promoting and implementing green building programs for a number of years - from developing iconic buildings such as the City of Melbourne’s CH2 through to mandatory local laws to ensure minimum energy efficiency standards.

“The GBCA’s new Local Government Task Group will further this trend by encouraging the uptake of voluntary rating tools, offering practical advice and assistance and educating councils on best practice from similar organisations around the world,” Ms Madew says.

The LGTG will be chaired by Wayne Wescott, sustainability consultant and former Chief Executive Officer of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Oceania Secretariat. Task Group members will be appointed for their technical expertise and industry knowledge.

“In the wake of the Copenhagen climate change negotiations, people are looking to make practical changes and green building is one of the most cost effective and efficient ways to cut carbon emissions and improve sustainability outcomes,” Mr Wescott says.

“The Task Group will integrate local governments’ efforts with other sectors – from developers to householders - to demonstrate that significant small-scale action across our nation can be aggregated towards major change.

“We aim to see more local governments take on the role of ‘green change agents’ and lead the way in the adoption of sustainable building and eco-friendly business practices.

“By working at the grass-roots level, we hope that councils around Australia will influence the future direction of green building in Australia,” Mr Wescott concludes.

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) is Australia’s leading authority on green building. The GBCA was established in 2002 to develop a sustainable property industry in Australia and drive the adoption of green building practices.

The GBCA has more than 830 member companies who work together to support the Council and its activities.The GBCA promotes green building programs, technologies, design practices and processes, and operates Australia’s only national voluntary comprehensive environmental rating system for buildings - Green Star.

The GBCA has an online portal, the Green Guide to Government Policy (available at www.gbca.org.au), which outlines green building programs and incentives at all levels of government around Australia.

Now THIS is an interview...

 I am not sure that Johannesburg's Mayor Masondo (who used to be President of ICLEI) quite got what he thought he would get here from Chris Barron of the Sunday Times...

Is Joburg ready for the World Cup?
I think we are.
What about the potholes?
We are addressing that problem.
What about the trenches that are left open for months for people to fall into?
Again, that’s one of the big problems.
What about the broken traffic lights?
It’s being addressed in an ongoing way.
What about the street lights that don’t work?
You keep on mentioning these things one by one. And my answer is an honest one, to say yes, there are gaps, and we are working on addressing the problems.
What about the missing street signs?
The matter has been raised with the mayoral committee by the executive director of 2010. And, again, a commitment has been made that we’ll be upgrading these in the next two to three months.
What about the litter?
The city’s much cleaner than it used to be.
There’s still a lot of rubbish around, though, isn’t there?
There is a lot of rubbish around. Pikitup is working on a programme that seeks to mobilise communities.
What about the blocked stormwater drains?
Yes, because it rains quite heavily. Some of the problems ... have been exposed and we are addressing them.
That’s an issue of maintenance, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s an issue of maintenance, but you know ...
They’re not being properly maintained?
They’re not being properly maintained. It’s the kind of thing that should be done in winter.
Why isn’t it happening?
There have been some problems there.
What about the lack of reliable public transport?
Well, I mean we have introduced BRT (bus rapid transit).
On all routes?
Not all the routes.
Do you use public transport?
Once in a while, yes. I use a taxi once in a while.
Wouldn’t it send an encouraging message if you used public transport to get to work?
I don’t know if you’re aware of this but annually, every October or so, we use public transport.
You use public transport every October?
Just to try and encourage people to use public transport.
So you use public transport once a year?
Yes sir. I don’t use public transport daily.
Don’t you want to encourage people to use public transport?
We’re doing our bit.
The mayor of New York uses public transport every day to get to work.
The mayor of New York?
The current mayor of London goes to work on a bicycle.
That’s going to the other extreme, but he’s doing something that’s positive.
Do you think you might use a bicycle one day?
I will do anything possible to incline people in the right direction, but I will not do a public stunt simply for the sake of it.
If the public transport was any good would you use it?
Absolutely, absolutely.
So you admit that it’s not?
It’s not very good, but there is something that we are doing to get public transport right.
You plug Joburg as a world-class city. Isn’t this false advertising?
No, it’s not false at all. That’s a goal we’re working towards, that’s a vision.
In your view what makes Joburg a world-class city?
One has had an opportunity to travel to many cities in the world and therefore I’ve had an opportunity to compare and reflect. Very clearly, Joburg is one of the best cities on the African continent.
But you call it a world-class city?
We are definitely moving in that direction. If you’re talking global cities in the world Joburg is definitely one of them.
What are your criteria for a world-class city?
I don’t know if you’re familiar with our Joburg vision statement?
Is it the vision of a world-class city that makes it a world-class city, or the reality?
What reality are you talking about?
Do you know of any other world-class city where an unelected mayor has been in office for 10 years?
Unelected? What do you mean by that?
That you haven’t been elected.
I’m sure you know that the political system is different in South Africa. I get elected by the councillors of Johannesburg.
In other words you’re deployed by the ANC, not elected by the people?
If you want to criticise the ANC and bash it, do so. But don’t try funny tricks. That won’t get us anywhere.

Moving across levels of government...

Joint focus across levels of government - in this case, Stamford, CT. The lesson? Aligned agendas do not mean that you have to agree on everything...

"The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), City of Stamford, US EPA Long Island Sound Study and the Mill River Collaborative today showcased work to restore the Mill River and allow for the return of important species of fish. A ceremony at Scalzi Park, (formerly known as Woodside Park), Stamford, featured the release of alewives into the Rippowam River (popularly known as the Mill River), where they will now be able to migrate upstream to breed and then move downstream to Long Island Sound as a result of the removal of old dams.

Removal of two dams by the City of Stamford with support from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mill River Collaborative in 2009 began a comprehensive restoration project which currently has opened up 4.5 river miles to increase fish runs on the Rippowam River (Mill River). At the ceremony 400 alewives brought from Bride Brook at Rocky Neck State Park, East Lyme, were released to help restore the river and rebuild river herring runs."

Did she say that the volcano was a falafel?

I know, I know, but it is just so wrong...

They're all doing it because it makes sense

The WSJ looks at early days in the development of new "green" jobs:

"Declaring that a city is going to replace yesterday's lost jobs with new green ones is a lot easier than actually doing so."

Although the general tone is "this is hyped" the actual story shows some movement (and a well-named official):

Plenty of people in Joliet recall the anticipation for other new industries that took years to develop. Tom Proffitt, an electrician for 37 years, remembers the excitement in the 1980s about laying fiber-optic cables for the expected advancements in information technology. He said many local companies didn't want to invest in equipment, fearing the industry would never become such a major force. "It took a few years" before the work materialized, he said.

Now Mr. Proffitt, the training director for a local electrical union, takes a trailer around to career fairs to show off solar equipment to high school students. His union just ordered new solar panels, at $700 apiece, to give apprentices a new set of skills for work they expect to come. "Solar was hyped and hyped," he said. "Now it's creeping in there."

Cyclists versus buses

The slightly annoying but always interesting Copenhagenise guy has a good follow on story in this endless battle...

"A bus full of Dutch exchange students were stranded in the northern Danish city of Aalborg because an angry cyclist stole the keys to their tourist bus.

The students stopped at a supermarket and their chauffeur parked illegally on the bike lane.

This irritated a local cycling citizen so much that he first scolded the Dutch angrily and then went into the bus and took the key.

'He simply takes the key out of the ignition and then disappears. So we have a bus chauffeur without any keys to a Dutch coach', said Peter Redder fra North Jutland Police.

The Dutch were able to get the bus moved and had to spend an extra night while they waited for reserve keys to be sent from the Netherlands. The Dutch admitted that it wasn't clever not to have extra keys and that they realise they shouldn't have parked in the bike lane, but they weren't too thrilled by the episode."

I guess it is all a gamble...

At a recent East-West Center conference in Honolulu

"Lin Chien-yuan, deputy mayor of Taipei, discussed some creative approaches to energy conservation, including programs in Taipei that qualify energy-savers to enter a cash lottery.

'Every month, we send out a notice of how much you spend for electricity,' Lin said. 'If you have saved more than 10 percent, you have saved money, of course. Not only that, you qualify for the lottery.'"

Its not just the science

An interesting lecture by an NYU Professor visiting Abu Dabi (and reported on by a local blogger) confronts the inconvenient truth that we simply do not have enough information to make easy business decisions on adaptation to climate change. So let's not hang it all on the science (important though that is), but include the vast range of public policy inputs and other business and cultural factors in working out our investment strategies for adaptation.

The blogger then asks:

"In Abu Dhabi's case, should the Government be thinking of moving the emirate's capital inland to its original seat, Al Ain? How should Abu Dhabi's vital coastal power and water desalination plants be protected? And what about the big industrial complexes on the Gulf coast?

In Dubai, what will happen to the huge Jebel Ali container port? Could Dubai's residents be reduced to eking out a living from offering well-heeled travellers tours of 'the Atlantis of the Gulf'?

The point is that science cannot currently provide the answers, although it may be able to do so in future. More data are needed, and we had better get cracking on making the required but difficult observations.

Levels of mandate - voluntary/mandatory continued

The Fresno Bee (can that be a real name?): Two concurrent battles globally - levels of government (in this case, State and local) that are battling over jurisdiction and the voluntary/mandatory battle over emissions targets.

"This month, Fresno County political leaders expect to vote on proposed targets for cutting emissions of those climate-changing gases -- mainly carbon dioxide from burning gasoline and other fossil fuels. In the long term, making those cuts will change how cities grow and how their people move around.

The local effort is intended at least partly to head off more aggressive targets that could be imposed this year by the state Air Resources Board, which oversees California's climate-change program.

'We felt it was prudent for us to provide a recommendation rather than letting the ARB do it on their own,' said David Fey, deputy city planner in Clovis.

Whether that strategy will work is not clear. The state still reserves the right to set more aggressive targets and may need to do so, because it is counting on local land-use and transportation measures to cut large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

An initial plan from December 2008 estimated that 5 million metric tons per year of emissions could be cut that way. That's equivalent to taking 1 million cars and light trucks off the road completely.

Local governments jealously guard their longstanding control of local land use.

The law mandating the greenhouse gas targets -- Senate Bill 375 from 2008 -- doesn't change that. It does, however, call for the ARB to set emissions targets, which the locals will have to meet or risk loss of funding for transportation and other uses."

The Commissioners might be happy to wait, I suspect

Environment Canterbury in New Zealand just gets better and better and Fiji is now introduced as an insult to political discourse!

"The Government has cancelled an October regional council election, depriving 378,512 Kiwis of a vote for the next 3 1/2 years.

Legislation reforming Environment Canterbury was introduced to Parliament last night under urgency, prompting a furious debate and accusations of 'a constitutional outrage'.

'Those people will be lucky to get a vote before the people of Fiji,' Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said.

Environment Minister Nick Smith and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide announced yesterday that the 14 elected ECan councillors would be replaced by up to seven commissioners.

Dame Margaret Bazley will lead the commissioners and her colleagues will be appointed by Mr Hide. The Government expected the commissioners would be ready to take over on May 1.

Elections scheduled for October have been scrapped and will not be held until October 2013, unless the commissioners are happy to finish their work earlier."

Haven't we learned about cutting corners yet?

StreetCorner.com.au reports on another cross government dispute. And who would back the States in implementing "fast-track" approaches? Especially in NSW?

"Waverley and Woollahra Mayors, Sally Betts and Andrew Petrie, have launched a stinging attack on the Premier Kristina Keneally’s ambitions to take even more planning powers from Councils saying it will hurt local residents.

Political opponents, Labor Member for Coogee Paul Pearce and the Liberal’s candidate for Coogee, Randwick Councillor Bruce Notley-Smith, are also united in their opposition to “emergency” fast-track Stimulus Package planning measures being extended to “significant projects”. They argue that the community will be cut out of the decision making process on the developments that impact them most. On the other hand, developers are welcoming the Review and all seem to agree that developers will be the main beneficiaries if even more projects bypass Councils and local community consultation processes."

One false move when you are sharing the road

My friend Mayor  Bob Harvey has done a great job (with some wonderful assistance) over the years in Waitakere in New Zealand but even so - this view from the cycle is a little hair-raising...

Oh dear God: evidence that we need a moratorium on all "sustainable city" awards

The Globe Awards have a nicely designed web-site (though with the requisite typos) but are very lazy on the whole subject. Is there any excuse for having an award for a sustainable city again this decade? And these cities are the finalists, for goodness sakes?

"# Curitiba, Brazil
# Malmö, Sweden
# Murcia, Spain
# Songpa, South Korea
# Stargard Szczecinski, Poland
# Sydney, Australia"

Jeepers, if even Seattle is dragging the chain...

Mayor McGinn - who knocked off the redoubtable Greg Nichols (now at Harvard) as Mayor of Seattle last year - is holding the line on a regional transport plan (and at least the water supply is looking up) but the majority investment strategy is still way askew:

"McGinn, in contrast, said this weekend (in remarks the invite-only Climate Neutral Seattle Unconference...) he decided to go it alone in voting against the plan because “it doesn’t meet our objectives on transit, land use, social equity, or greenhouse gas emissions.” Instead of moving the region boldly forward in promoting transit, density, equitable access to infrastructure, and greenhouse-gas reductions, the plan preserves the region’s “moderate” status quo—relatively modest investments in transit and biking coupled with massive outlays on new highways for cars.

McGinn’s position, incidentally, is shared by groups like the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, the Cascade Bicycle Club, the Transportation Choices Coalition, the Washington Environmental Council—and even those radical lefties at the US Environmental Protection Agency."

And it makes the discipline a lot easier

Andrew Sullivan (Taking Green To The Extreme - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan) has an interesting series going on at the moment showing that we need a dose of humanism (not to mention reality and compassion) in the green movement more than ever...

Lisa Hymas contends that "the single most meaningful contribution I can make to a cleaner, greener world is to not have children."

The average American generates about 66 times more CO2 each year than the average Bangladeshi—20 tons versus 0.3 tons. If you consider not just the carbon impact of your own kids but of your kids' kids and so on, the numbers get even starker. According to a 2009 study in Global Environmental Change [PDF] that took into account the long-term impact of Americans' descendants, each child adds an estimated 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to a parent's carbon legacy—that's about 5.7 times his or her direct lifetime emissions.

Another city on the brink

Other governments face the consequences of population loss and high unemployment...and the State has no funds to offer either.

Report: Detroit bankruptcy looms without drastic change | detnews.com | The Detroit News:

Detroit -- Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council must reduce the size of government and slash the city's budget deficit to stave off bankruptcy or state receivership, according to a report released Monday.

Without draconian cuts and changes aimed at downsizing government, the city could end up with a 'possible' general fund deficit between $446 million and $466 million to its $1.6 billion budget.

What a mess

Villaraigosa Calls For City Agencies To Close 2 Days A Week: "The mayor of Los Angeles says all city departments except police, public safety and those that make money must close two days a week because of a budget crisis."

(From the Huffington Post)

Apparently brought on by a dispute over raised water rates, this is another example of multiple levels of mandates that cross governance systems and become unworkable. And the end result? A shuffling crisis of service delivery tha makes everyone even more cynical about local governments...

Its the layers that are the problem

Disputes over the different mandates of levels of government is a continuing theme - now being played out ruthlessly in New Zealand with the sacking of Environment Canterbury, a regional Council. what was the role of the territorial Mayors?

The Press reports:

Canterbury council chief executives left Environment Canterbury (ECan) meetings "with a cream cake in one hand and a blood-covered knife in the other", ousted ECan deputy chairwoman Jo Kane says.

Her comments come as Canterbury mayors who urged the demise of ECan will soon influence how the regional council is run.

Critics have accused Canterbury's 10 mayors of a "power grab" after legislation rushed through Parliament last week made them advisers to the Government-appointed commissioners who will replace the 14 sacked regional councillors.

Christchurch City councillors said the mayors were sharing the spoils of victory, with Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker already indicating a willingness to take control of the city's buses from ECan.

Creative thinking about adaptation

New York has been the site of some fascinating approaches to climate adaptation - using zones and different teams of architects' imaginations - and the Museum of Modern Art has just displayed some of the results.

MoMA | Rising Currents: Opening of the Exhibition

A focus on buildings could do a lot of heavy lifting

Rob Gell told me about the interesting work being done by global company Siemens on future energy and water planning. It was released on World Water Day in Melbourne this week.

I saw a bit in the press but it mostly picked up their comment on the future of electric vehicles (big). But there is much more to their work and worth having a look at - and noting that they see "more than" 30% CO2 reductions by 2030 from 2010 levels in buildings...and given that buildings contribute around 40% of total emissions, we are talking big potential savings here.

OK so we want the drought to break but a bucket on your head?

That's not hail - this is hail (in WA)...

Local interventions

From the Northern Star in northern NSW, Australia:

"BEEF and mutton fat is helping to keep 100 of Ballina Shire Council’s diesel-fuelled vehicles on the road.

Combined with soy beans and conventional diesel, the by-products of Australia’s meat processing industry are used in a new fuel called B20.

Ballina is the first council in the Northern Rivers to use biodiesel in its fleet."

It costs 3 to 4 cents a litre more than regular diesel, and we do not know how many litres they are using and therefore the cost of the reductions. But this is an interesting development away from the major cities.

We all need a bit of discipline

Fascinating talk from Stewart Brand, a great hero of mine - and who is now advocating nuclear power (gulp!) - on whole earth discipline:

Thinking about technology and scale

If you have been following the absolute debacle of the insulation program in Australia, one of the lessons may be: if we are to directly intervene with technology, the scale (international, national, regional, local) might be critical.

Here is Berkeley California's experience from a Berkeley blog:



"Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has defended Berkeley FIRST, a pilot program initiated by the city to help residents finance solar power systems for their homes, and which has been cited as a model for other cities across the country.

In a letter to the East Bay Express, Bates says he believes Berkeley FIRST might be the city’s “most important contribution to combating climate change” and says it has laid the foundation for a larger scale state-wide program.

He says Berkeley FIRST was a catalyst for the expansion of residential solar energy and that one of its greatest advantages was its scalability.  ”Berkeley FIRST has become a national model for energy efficiency and renewable energy adoption. Vice President Biden recognized Berkeley FIRST and, in taking it to national scale, renamed the program Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). Seventeen states and more than 200 cities are now preparing to launch Berkeley-like PACE programs,” he writes."

Important work on the ground while others debate...

A good description from Maria Blair - who has now moved to the White House - of the Rockefeller Foundation's adaptation program in the Asia Pacific area (disclosure: I was involved while at ICLEI).

Hands up who wants to go to Cancun?

Jumping Frog thought it "stripped open the arrogance and negligence of the developed countries on the issue" while a philanthropist's view was that "(i)f COP 15 was any indication, international, multi-state level processes will not provide all the solutions to climate adaptation and mitigation."

Yep, global governance..

One Sydney blogger (and Indian Youth Climate Network delegate) said that "COP saw more protesters and activists than thinkers and experts", and an American economist noted that "I am ambivalent about NGO involvement. ... On the whole, it was a surprisingly young group. "

A sub-section of that - what is the appropriate involvement of non-Government Organisations?

Food for thought as I prepare for a presentation at the Australian Information Industry Association meeting at KPMG next Monday.

Re-purposing: now can we do it with COP?

Cats know how to do it:

As does our cat at our front door:

I know it all feels perilously close to the LOLcats but I am wondering how we take the essence of COP - countries from all around the world meeting to focu on climate change - and turn it into something useful (as opposed to Copenhagen)...

Nice fence but no site plan so: fail...

-- Amina Khan from the Los Angeles Times reports on a curious state of affairs...

Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during drought conditions. But in Orange, city officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn, which they did to save water. 

The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their frontyard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple reasoned, the lush grass soaked up tens of thousands of gallons of water – and hundreds of dollars – each year.

Quan and Angelina thought they were doing something good for the environment.
“We’ve got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future,” said Quan Ha, an IT manager for Kelley Bluebook.

But city officials informed the Has that they were violating several city laws that require residents to cover significant ports of their front lawns with live ground cover. On Tuesday, the two are scheduled to appear in Orange County Superior Court to challenge a lawsuit the city filed against them. They are fighting City Hall, saying their yard looks fine.

Soon after the city complained about the yard, they covered the dirt with wood chips, with help from neighbor Dennis Cleek.

“It’s their yard, it’s not overgrown with weeds, it’s not an eyesore,” said Cleek, whose own yard boasts fruit and avocado trees. “We should be able to have our yards look the way we want them to.”
But city officials determined the fix was not acceptable, saying city codes require that 40% of the yard be landscaped predominantly with live plants.

“Compliance -- that’s all we’ve ever wanted,” explained City Atty. Wayne Winthers. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-resistant greenery – lavender, rosemary, horsetail and pittosporum, among others. They sent a photo to city officials in October but say they received no response.

A few months later, they heard from the city, which said their landscaping still did not comply with city standards.

“They put up a nice fence but [the photo] didn’t show anything about how they had complied with code, as far as the frontyard goes,” Winthers said, “nor did it include a site plan.”
At the end of January, the Has received a letter from the city informing them they had been charged with with misdemeanor code violations and must appear in court.

“It’s just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,” Quan Ha said. “Doesn’t it waste funds to go back and fourth in court, rather than sending pictures, e-mails and having phone conversations?”

Winthers said he hoped the city could work out a compromise with the couple. “We know times are tough, but we’re willing to work with them; we’d be more than happy to,” he said.

Meanwhile, the couple said there had been one bright spot: They reduced their water usage from from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009.

Curious scenes: will we all look back and shake our heads in wonder ?

Even the City of Light has problems keeping the waste management system out of bike lanes - and I loved the Paris Velib. I wonder if there is a web-site wholly devoted to bike-lanes and their woes?

And you don't have to even crane your neck

This week, I am in Paris to do an International Energy Agency workshop and staying with a friend for the weekend. And this is his view from the front window...sigh.

Regional forecasts - still early days

Quirin Schiermeier has an excellent article in Nature which looks at four areas of significant dispute within climate science circles: regional climate forecasts, precipitation forecasts, aerosols and palaeoclimate data.

Regional forecasts are a critical tool for local governments and it seems to me that we are awaiting good approaches to closely-grained data to justify the costs of action on adaptation in some cases:

"Downscaled climate models face particular uncertainty problems dealing in regions with complex topography, such as where mountains form a wall between two climatically different plains. Another potential source of error comes from projections concerning future greenhouse-gas emissions, which vary depending on assumptions about economic developments."

With the levels of uncertainty high, we need to mount potent multi-factorial arguments to ensure that we capture all of the benefits - as I suspect that the costs will have a large in-built variability for some time.

Curious scenes: will we all look back and shake our heads in wonder ?

From Water Words that Work: the September 2009 floods in Georgia, USA. Wild and extreme weather is not just a forecast...

You say cities, I say local governments

Cities are all the rage internationally. But there is clearly two conversations going on: one that talks about local governments and one that talks about urban cities.

The local government conversation focuses on, well, government that is local - such as Councils, shires, municipalities and so on. They may be urban and very large (Brisbane City Council has over 1 million people in Australia) or rural and very small (Diamantina Shire has around 2000 people at the top end of the same State).

The focus here is on the local feedback loops that can be democracy at its best or worst: speedy, innovative, parochial, old-fashioned and so on. From this focus comes "localism" and an interest in working in a small-scale area of action. It has been the fuel for the growth of organisations such as ICLEI over the past 15 years.

The urban conversation is the one that you hear including comments such as: "75% of energy use is in cities" or "over half of the global population now lives in cities" - I swear I heard these quotes a dozen times a day in Copenhagen. Mr Van den Brande, President of the Committee of the Regions, gave us both in one go.

Putting aside the significant methodological issues concerning counting urbanisation (see the 2008 World Energy Outlook for a look at this), and therefore not getting too focused on the numbers, this story is all about clout and action. The World Bank even supports action with cities!

But they are two different concepts, even though they may overlap. In UN speak, the term "cities" is shorthand for local governments, but local governments know that this is not true.

Many rural local governments are crucial in the climate change debate for example), though not necessarily as the end-users of energy. As potential sites for significant energy supply - such  as wind farms - it could be argued that in many countries rural local governments (and the ways that they manage planning regulations and land-use) are more important than many urban areas.

As well, many rural local governments will be at the cutting edge of work on adapting to the impacts of climate change, an adaptation that will need to be skillfully integrated into the other pressing priorities of local life.

So, yes, cities are important for all of the reasons that are commonly shared. But let's not suggest that they are sufficient to do the entire job...