Animais Biônicos (2010) - Bionic Pets:

Ilustração (detalhes biônicos) para Revista Galileu 224.
A matéria trata sobre a revolução dos tratamentos que aumentam a longevidade dos animais de estimação. Também aborda a evolução biônica que já começou.
Produzido por: Gerson Mora

Imma Be Infographic:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFbho5zUVdQ

Scott Bricker
(Photo © J. Maus)

Scott Bricker, the former executive director of the Portland-based Bicycle Transportation Alliance has been hired by non-profit America Walks, a national coalition of pedestrian advocacy groups.

Bricker, who was let go by the BTA back in November, is now working as a consultant. With his new contract position as Campaign Manager with America Walks, he’ll be responsible for managing their Walking Wins Summit that will be held during the annual Pro Walk/Pro Bike conference coming to Chattanooga, Tennessee in September.

The summit is a project of America Walks and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP). The aim of the summit is to coalesce interest groups to support an action plan they hope will fund walking infrastructure and “thus strengthen American communities and ensure that everyone of all ages and abilities has high-quality walking access to their daily needs.”

Utah Isn’t a Southern State!

Animation NotesOriginally uploaded by Chris Landauchrislandauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12726034628357552774noreply@blogger.com0

Roberta’s already grows about 20 percent of its needs, in a good week, in a small roof garden in back of the restaurant and in a backyard garden several blocks away.

Michelle Knapik
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

Once inside the unassuming entrance of Roberta’s, if you can cast your gaze past the wood fired stove and pizza gurus, let your olfactory senses take in something beyond the sweet aroma of ricotta pancakes sopping up maple syrup, and put down your mason jar of local beer, you will see, hear and experience the backyard urban oasis – a farming oasis that is. But don’t look out, look up. There is where you will find the first of the rooftop greenhouses.

The hoop greenhouse is built on top of a shipping container that is fitted out as a radio station. The semi vacant lot next door is also being transformed into greenhouse space that will tie into a fledgling compost operation. Look closely as the construction of this greenhouse and you will find yourself peering into salvaged factory windows.

Wait, before you think that this is this some urban warrior plot to cut out the rural farmer, you need to take in the full story. This enterprise is about connecting people to food, and people to people. It is about creating community assets and efficiently using local resources. It is about transforming underutilized urban hardscapes to grow food, while building better relationships with rural farmers to supply the elements that cannot come easily from the urban farm

See the rest of the blog posting by Michelle Knapik here.

Roberta’s locavores farm an acre of rooftop.

Roberta’s pizzaria website here.

Brooklyn Grange working with Roberta’s to build a one acre rooftop farm

Brooklyn Grange aims to build on decades of rooftop farming best practices and establish a one acre farm that operates as a sustainable small business. The farm will sell fresh, organic and affordable food to the local community, contributing to the health and economic development of the neighborhood.

Seeds Sown! March 5, 2010

A couple of nights ago we planted about 5,000 seeds (tomatoes, eggplant, onions, herbs, etc) so that we’ve got an army of seedlings ready to transplant on the roof once the last frost is passed in mid-April. Thanks to the dozen or so volunteers who came out to help get the little guys in soil, and to Roberta’s for letting us use the army tent.

Visit Brooklyn Grange website here.

Hoping for a Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn.

Gary Boulanger is Board President of the
National Interscholastic Cycling Association.
(Photos © J. Maus)

One of today’s many excellent breakout sessions focused on youth cycling programs. When I popped my head in I saw a familiar face at the lectern. It was Gary Boulanger, former bike industry journalist, PR guy, and entrepreneur behind the now defunct bike brand Cycles Gaansari (and the eponymously named bike shop in Dayton, Ohio).

Boulanger is now the recently elected Board President of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). NICA is a new organization (they held their first board meeting just last month) working toward the ambitious goal of developing competitive high school mountain biking leagues from coast-to-coast by 2020. So far there are just three states with leagues — California (NorCal and SoCal), Colorado, and Washington. But, with an impressive list of big-time corporate sponsors (Specialized, SRAM, Trek among others) and partners, the future looks very bright.

Freshman girls compete in a recent race in the NorCal League.

During today’s session, Boulanger highlighted a program in Marin County, California. At Sir Francis Drake High School, the 60-student bike team is larger than the football team. Last Sunday, he added, nearly 500 students competed at a national competition. Last year, the SoCal League (from Southern California) boasted 16 teams. Boulanger said that league will have 20 teams this year and most teams have grown 30-50 percent over last year.

Gary Fisher is a big fan of
youth cycling.

The Colorado league will start this fall and a league in Washington State has plans to kick off in 2011.

One big fan of NICA is bike industry icon Gary Fisher. Fisher was in the audience at the session today and I chatted with him about it afterwards. He’s excited not only about the positive aspects biking can bring to young people, but also about the economic potential this could have for the bike industry. “There are about 50,000 high schools in this country,” he said, “If we can get bike leagues going in a lot more them, it would really lift the industry.”

I wonder if there’s a way to tie this in with Earl Blumenauer’s Safe Routes to High Schools bill (H.R. 4021)? And Oregon, come on! We should be all over this!

Bike Summit coverage sponsored by Planet Bike. More stories on ">our special coverage page.

Baltimore Food Desert Final

:

done and dun. this is the back!

Baltimore Food Deserts Infographic:

This infographic looks at the food available in three economically different neighborhoods in Baltimore and the general healthiness of that food and how that effects the population suffering deaths from Heart Disease, one of the top causes of death in Baltimore City.

:

this is the front! it gets folded into a booklet!

A taste for irony is a useful habit to cultivate if you happen to write about energy issues in the declining years of a civilization defined by its extravagant use of energy, on the one hand, and the dubious logic it uses to justify that extravagance on the other. One of the things you can count on, if that description fits you, is that any time you discuss one of the fallacies that has helped back that civilization into a corner, plenty of readers will respond with comments that demonstrate the fallacy in question more clearly than any of your examples could have done.

Last week’s Archdruid Report post was no exception to that rule. Regular readers will recall that it focused on the difference between the quantity of energy in an energy source and the concentration of energy in that energy source, and pointed out that the latter, not the former, determines the exergy in the source – that is, the amount of work that the energy source is able to perform. True to form, I fielded a flurry of comments that took issue with this, or with the conclusions I drew from it, on the grounds that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the quantity of energy in some favorite energy source.

The example I’d like to highlight here is far from the worst I received. Quite the contrary; it’s precisely because it’s a thoughtful response from an equally thoughtful reader that it makes a good starting point for this week’s discussion. The reader in question pointed out that the photons that reach the Earth from the Sun each contain exactly as much energy as they did when they left the solar atmosphere, and argued on that basis that a point I made about the exergy of solar power was at least open to question.

He’s quite right about the photons, of course. The energy contained in a photon is defined by its frequency, and that remains pretty much the same (barring a bit of gravitational redshifting) from the moment it spins out of the thermonuclear maelstrom of the Sun until the moment eight minutes later when it arrives on earth and gets absorbed by a green leaf, let’s say, or the absorbent surface in a solar water heater. Once again, though, that’s a matter of the quantity of energy, not the concentration. The concentration, in this case, is determined by the rate at which photons impact the leaf or the solar panel; that depends on how widely spread the photons are, and that depends, in turn, on how far the leaf and the panel are from the Sun.

Think of it this way. The individual photons that heat the planet Mercury each contain, on average, the same quantity of energy as the individual photons that heat the planet Neptune. Is Neptune as warm as Mercury? Not hardly, and the reason is that by the time they get out to the orbit of Neptune, the Sun’s rays are spread out over a much vaster area, so each square foot of Neptune gets a lot fewer photons than a corresponding square foot of Mercury. The photons are less concentrated in space, and that, not the quantity of energy they each contain, determines how much of the hard work of heating a planet they are able to do. There are stars in the night sky that produce photons far more energetic, on average, than those released by the Sun, but you’re not going to get a star tan from their light!

This may seem like an obvious point. Still, it deserves restatement, because so many contemporary plans for using solar energy ignore it, fixating on the raw quantity of solar energy that reaches the Earth rather than the very modest concentration of that energy. A habit of comforting abstraction feeds that sort of thinking. It’s easy to insist, for example, that the quantity of solar energy falling annually on some fairly small fraction of the state of Nevada, let’s say, is equal to the quantity of energy that the US uses as electricity each year, and to jump from there to insist that if we just cover a hundred square miles of Nevada with mirrors, so all that sunlight can be used to generate steam, we’ll be fine.

What gets misplaced in appealing fantasies of this sort? Broadly speaking, three things.

The first is that familiar nemesis of renewable energy schemes, the problem of net energy. It would take a pretty substantial amount of highly concentrated energy to build that hundred square mile array of mirrors, counting the energy needed to manufacture the mirrors, the tracking assemblies, the pipes, the steam turbines, and all the other hardware, as well as the energy needed to produce the raw materials that go into them – no small amount, that latter. It would take another very substantial amount of concentrated energy, regularly supplied, to keep it in good working order amid the dust, sandstorms, and extreme temperatures of the Nevada desert; and if the amount of energy produced by the scheme comes anywhere close to what’s theoretically possible, that would probably be the only time in history this has ever occurred with a very new, very large, and very experimental technological project. Subtract the energy cost to build and run the plant from the energy you could reasonably (as opposed to theoretically) expect to get out of it, and the results will inevitably be a good deal less impressive than they look on paper.

The second is another equally common nemesis of renewable energy schemes, the economic dimension. Plenty of renewables advocates say, in effect, that people want electricity, and a hundred square miles of mirrors in Nevada will provide it, so what are we waiting for? This sort of thinking is extremely common, of course; mention that any popular technology you care to name might not be economically viable in a future of energy and resource constraints, and you’re sure to hear plenty of arguments that it has to be economically feasible because, basically, it’s so nifty. There’s a reason for that – it’s the sort of thinking that works in an age of abundance, the kind of age that’s coming to an end around us right now.

The end of that age, though, makes such thinking a hopeless anachronism. In an age of energy and resources constraints, any proposed use of energy and resources must compete against all other existing and potential uses for a supply that isn’t adequate to meet them all. Market forces and political decisions both play a part in the resulting process of triage. If investing billions of dollars (and, more importantly, the equivalent amounts of energy and resources) in mirrors in the Nevada desert doesn’t produce as high an economic return as other uses of the same money, energy, and resources, the mirrors are going to draw the short end of the stick. Political decisions can override that calculus to some extent, but impose an equivalent requirement: if investing that money, energy, and resources in mirrors doesn’t produce as high a political payoff as other uses of the same things, once again, the fact that the mirrors might theoretically allow America’s middle classes to maintain some semblance of their current lifestyle is not going to matter two photons in a Nevada sandstorm.

Still, the problems with net energy and economic triage both ultimately rest on thermodynamic issues, because the exergy available from solar energy simply isn’t that high. It takes a lot of hardware to concentrate the relatively mild heat the Earth gets from the Sun to the point that you can do more than a few things with it, and that hardware entails costs in terms of net energy as well as economics. It’s not often remembered that big solar power schemes, of the sort now being proposed, were repeatedly tried from the late 19th century on, and just as repeatedly turned out to be economic duds.

Consider the solar engine devised and marketed by American engineer Frank Shuman in the first decades of the 20th century. The best solar engine of the time, and still the basis of a good many standard designs, it was an extremely efficient device that focused sunlight via parabolic troughs onto water-filled pipes that drove an innovative low-pressure steam engine. Shuman’s trial project in Meadi, Egypt, used five parabolic troughs 204 feet long and 13 feet wide. The energy produced by this very sizable and expensive array? All of 55 horsepower. Modern technology could do better, doubtless, but not much better, given the law of diminishing returns that affects all movements in the direction of efficiency, and most likely not enough better to matter.

Does this mean that solar energy is useless? Not at all. What it means is that a relatively low-exergy source of energy, such as sunlight, can’t simply be used to replace a relatively high-exergy source such as coal. That’s what Shuman was trying to do; like most of the solar pioneers of his time, he’d done the math, realized that fossil fuels would run out in the not infinitely distant future, and argued that they would have to be replaced by solar energy: “One thing I feel sure of,” he wrote, “and that is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism.”

He may well have been right, but trying to make lukewarm sunlight do the same things as the blazing heat of burning coal was not the way to solve that problem. The difficulty – another of those awkward implications of the laws of thermodynamics – is that whenever you turn energy from one form into another, you inevitably lose a lot of energy to waste heat in the process, and your energy concentration – and thus the exergy of your source – goes down accordingly. If you have abundant supplies of a high-exergy fuel such as coal or petroleum, that doesn’t matter enough to worry about; you can afford to have a great deal of the energy in a gallon of gasoline converted into waste heat and pumped out into the atmosphere by way of your car’s radiator, for example, because there’s so much exergy to spare in gasoline that you have more than enough left over to send your car zooming down the road. With a low-exergy source such as sunlight, you don’t have that luxury, which is why Shuman’s solar plant, which covered well over 13,000 square feet, produced less power than a very modest diesel engine that cost a small fraction of the price and took up an even smaller fraction of the footprint.

This is also why those solar energy technologies that have proven to be economical and efficient are those that minimize conversion losses by using solar energy in the form of heat. That’s the secret to using low-exergy sources: heat is where exergy goes to die, and so if you let it follow that trend, you can turn a relatively diffuse source to heat at very high efficiencies. The heat you get is fairly mild compared to (say) burning gasoline, but that’s fine for practical purposes. It doesn’t take intense heat to raise a bathtub’s worth water to 120º, warm a chilly room, or cook a meal, and it’s precisely tasks like these that solar energy and other low-exergy sources do reliably and well.

It’s interesting to note that Augustin Mouchot, the great 19th century pioneer of solar energy, kept running up against this issue in his work. Mouchot began working with solar energy out of a concern that France, handicapped by its limited reserves of coal, needed some other energy source to compete in the industrial world of the late 19th century. He built the first successful solar steam engines, but they faced the same problems of concentration that made Shuman’s more sophisticated project an economic flop; a representative Mouchot engine, his 1874 Tours demonstration model, used 56 square feet of conical reflector to focus sunlight on a cylindrical boiler, and generated all of 1/2 horsepower.

Yet some of his other solar projects were quite a bit more successful. For many years, the French Foreign Legion relied on one of his inventions in their North African campaigns: a collapsible solar oven that could be packed into a box 20 inches square. It had the same general design as the engine, a conical reflector focusing sunlight onto a cylinder that pointed toward the sun, but it worked, and worked well; the Mouchot oven could cook a large pot roast from raw to well done in under half an hour. Another project, a solar still, proved equally successful, converting wine into brandy at a rate of five gallons a minute – rather good brandy at that, “bold and agreeable to the taste,” Mouchot wrote proudly, “and with...the savor and bouquet of an aged eau-de-vie.” Again, notice the difference: low-exergy sunlight doesn’t convert well to mechanical motion via a steam engine, due to the inevitable conversion losses, but it’s very efficient as a source of heat.

The implications of this difference circle back to a point made by E.F. Schumacher many years ago, and discussed several times already in these essays: the technology that’s useful and appropriate in a setting of energy and resource constraints – for example, the Third World nations of his time, or the soon-to-be-deindustrializing nations of ours – is not the same as the technology that’s useful and appropriate in a setting of abundance – for example, the industrial nations of the age that is ending around us. Centralized power generation is a good example. If you’ve got ample supplies of highly concentrated energy, it makes all the sense in the world to build big centralized power plants and send the power thus produced across hundreds or thousands of miles to consumers; you’ll lose plenty of energy to waste heat at every point along the way, especially in the conversion of one form of energy to another, but if your sources are concentrated and abundant, that doesn’t matter much.

If concentrated energy sources are scarce and rapidly depleting, on the other hand, this sort of extravagance can no longer be justified, and after a certain point, it can no longer be afforded. Since much of the energy that people actually use in their daily lives takes the form of relatively mild heat – the sort that will heat water, warm a house, cook a meal, and so on – it makes more sense in an energy-poor society for people to gather relatively diffuse energy right where they are, and put that to work instead. The same point can be made with equal force for a great many industrial processes; when what you need is heat – and for plenty of economically important activities, such as distilling brandy, that’s exactly what you need – sunlight, concentrated to a modest degree by way of reflectors or fluid-heating panels, will do the job quite effectively.

This is another reason why Schumacher’s concept of intermediate technology, and a great many of the specific technologies he and his associates and successors created, provide a resource base of no little importance as the world’s industrial societies stumble down the far slopes of Hubbert’s peak. When concentrated energy is scarce, local production of relatively diffuse energy for local use is a far more viable approach for a great many uses. This will allow the highly concentrated energies that are left to be directed to those applications that actually need them, while also shielding local communities from the consequences of the failure or complete collapse of centralized systems. The resulting economy may not have much resembance to today’s fantasies of a high-tech future, but the barbarism Frank Shuman feared is not the only alternative to that future; there’s something to be said for a society, even a relatively impoverished and resource-scarce one, that can still reliably provide its inhabitants with hot baths, warm rooms in winter, and well-done pot roasts – and, of course, good brandy.

Advocates from Omaha, Nebraska.
L to R: Tammie Dodge, Kerri Peterson,
Julie Harris.
(Photo © J. Maus)

One of the great things about being at the National Bike Summit is the feeling that biking, as a movement, is growing. And each year I’m reminded that it’s growing far beyond the typical, bike-friendly cities you always see on top ten lists.

Last night I met Julie Harris and a few of her friends from Activate Omaha.

When I did a double-take at her name badge and joked about biking in Omaha (in a nice way, I wasn’t condescending) she jumped right in and said, “You’d be surprised!” Julie said they’ve got seven bike-friendly businesses, a nascent bikeway with 20 more miles coming soon (paid for with $600,000 raised from private corporations), and a solid Safe Routes to Schools program.

Nebraska is one of 48 states represented at the summit this year. Nice meeting you Julie and best of luck in your advocacy work!

Bike Summit coverage sponsored by Planet Bike. More stories on ">our special coverage page.

Peter Birch from Google.
(Photos © J. Maus)

Earlier today, I got he opportunity to speak with Peter Birch, the product manager for Google Earth (and world traveler) who spearheaded development of their new biking directions feature.

Before I get to the Q & A with Birch, here’s a recap of his comments from this morning’s Opening Plenary.

“The challenge we face is, how do we get more people on bikes…. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable on a lot of the routes they’re on with busy roads and unfamiliar streets. We wanted to figure out, how can we scale this up, so we can handle every ride? At Google, we love problems of scale.”

Birch shared that they’ve got detailed map data ready to go on the site for 150 cities and over 12,000 miles of trail data — thanks to a partnership with the Rails to Trails Conservancy. “And over the next several months, we hope to extend that coverage as well as improve the quality of directions we provide.”

Birch then started talking like an advocate (which it turns out, he is — see my Q & A below):

“With this launch, we’re showing our commitment to providing maps for people, not just cars. We’re really proud to be a part of this growing movement in helping to build greener and more sustainable communities… What we’re launching today is just a start, we know they’re only as good as the data that’s fed into it, that’s why we need your help. You guys are the experts, we need your feedback in terms of providing directions and advice in terms of which roads and trails are the best ones… then we’ll transfer the knowledge to the people who aren’t as confident and experienced in where to go.”

“With this launch, we’re showing our commitment to providing maps for people, not just cars.”
— Peter Birch, Google Earth Product Manager

Next up was Google product manager Shannon Guymon. “Cyclists have not let us forget that they haven’t been included [with Google Maps]. We’ve heard you all loud and clear.”

Guymon pointed out some of the new tool’s features. “We weight the algorithm to put you on trails as much as possible, if those aren’t possible, we go to the next best options avoiding steep hills and busy roads.” Guyton says they’ve also updated trip times. In addition, the new tool also allows you to drag and drop your route anywhere you choose and the directions update automatically. There’s also a gadget on the main Google Maps Biking so website publishers can embed the tool in their site.

Here’s a quick and rough transcript of my Q & A with Birch:

With car directions, a wrong turn can be a hassle, but with biking directions, bad directions can led to serious safety issues. How do you respond to people who are pointing out direction results that put them in harm’s way?

We know that’s going to happen. But this feature is in beta… it’s not a mature product yet. We really want to get everything right, that’s why we made this announcement here at the Summit; because these are the people with the expertise to tell us which roads are good and which ones aren’t.

What about data? Where did most of the bike route data come from?

“We’ve been working with RTC [Rails to Trails Conservancy] to get access to their rail-trail network. Most of the other data was brought in more ad-hoc from municipalities.”

Will this be brought to the iPhone and other mobile platforms any time soon?

“You can expect that to happen. Mobile is a key focus for Google, especially with directions, it’s great to have it in your pocket. I can’t tell you any specific dates right now, but we’re working on it.”

Is there any compatibility with GPS?

Right now, users can import a .KML file through the MyMaps tool. Just go to the “mymaps” tab and hit “import.”

What about problem spots and handling feedback from users?

“[There's a nice "Report a Problem" feature on the Google Maps Biking page.] Once it comes in, we vet it and say, “Is this a valid change?” If it is, it’ll take about a month for us to make the change.”

While you spoke, it was clear that your heart is in bike advocacy. Can you speak to how/if advocacy plays into this for you personally and for Google?

“I’ve been a bike advocate for years. I tried to get on the SFBC board and have been a member for 15 years. At Google, we like to make change thru action. Google is very bottom up… This [biking direcdtions] happened because people that work here are passionate about biking… We also want toserver the needs of our users. By launching bike direcstion, we want to make it easier for more people to get into biking.”

What do you think about the summit?

“It’s great. I wish I could stay here all week. Bicycling advocacy is hard work and it’s great to see so many tough and persistent people working on this.”

Go to Maps.Google.com/biking to learn more. Previous coverage of this story here (with lots of informative comments) and here.

Bike Summit coverage sponsored by Planet Bike. More stories on ">our special coverage page.

by Warren Karlenzig

Last post I covered some guiding principles for urban resilience planning in the face of climate change and diminishing resources (especially fresh water and oil). Considering these guidelines, what aspect of U.S. metro
development stands out as the most ill-advised and risky? Short answer: exurban sprawl.

If the "Great Recession" taught us anything, it is that allowing the unrestrained sprawl of energy-inefficient communities and infrastructure is a now-bankrupt economic development strategy and constitutes a recipe for continued disaster on every level.

"Shy away from fringe places in the exurbs and places with long car commutes or where getting a quart of milk takes a 15-minute drive," was the warning the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers gave institutional and commercial real estate investors in their Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 report.

I make the further case that the exurban economic model is an outright anachronism in the Post Carbon Institute's Post Carbon Reader, which comes out this summer from the University of California Press and Watershed Media.

Much of US "economic growth" in the 1990s and early 2000s was based on the roaring engine of exurban investment speculation with gas at historic record low prices. That bubble popped on the spike of $4 a gallon; we now are paying the piper with abandoned tract developments, foreclosed strip malls and countless miles of roads to nowhere. Gas prices are forecast to head over $3 this summer, and likely much higher when a forecast global "oil crunch" hits by 2014 or so.

Besides the economic risks, circa-twentieth-century sprawl has destroyed valuable farmland, sensitive wildlife habitat, and irreplaceable drinking water systems at great environmental, economic, and social cost. We can no longer manage and develop our communities with no regard for the limits of natural resources and ecological systems that provide our most basic needs.

A shining alternative is metropolitan areas that have begun to plan for the future by building their resilience with economic, energy, and environmental uncertainty in mind: top U.S. metro locations include Portland, Oregon, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Denver, and suburbs such as Davis, California and Alexandria, Virginia. These communities are employing some of the following key strategies that underpin resilient urbanism:

Build and re-build denser and smarter

Most U.S. suburban and urban population or use densities need to be increased so that energy-efficient transportation choices like public transit, bicycling and walking can flourish. Multi-modal mobility cannot succeed at the densities found in most American suburban communities today. Increasing density doesn't have to mean building massive high-rises: adding just a few stories on existing or new mixed-use buildings can double population density--and well-designed, increased density can also improve community quality of life and economic vitality.

Focus on water use efficiency and conservation

Our freshwater supply is one of our most vulnerable resources in the United States. Drought is no longer just a problem for Southwestern desert cities--communities in places like Texas, Georgia and even New Jersey recently had to contend with water shortages. As precipitation patterns become less reliable and underground aquifers dry up, more communities will need to significantly reduce water demand through efficiency, conservation, restrictions and "tiered pricing," which means a basic amount of water will be available at a lower price; above average use will become increasingly
expensive the more that is used.

Global climate change is already thought to be melting mountain snowpack much earlier than average in the spring, causing summer and fall water shortages. This has serious planning and design implications for many metro areas. For example, Lake Mead, which provides 90% of the water used by Las Vegas (above photo) and is a major water source for Phoenix and other Southwestern cities, has a projected 50% chance of drying up for water storage by 2021.

Focus on food

Urban areas need to think much bigger and plan systemically for significantly increased regional and local food production. Growing and processing more food for local consumption bolsters regional food security and provides jobs while generally reducing the energy, packaging and storage needed to transport food to metro regions. In Asia and Latin America--even in big cities like Shanghai, China; Havana, Cuba; and Seoul, South Korea--there are thriving small farms interspersed within metro areas.

Gardens--whether in backyards, community parks, or in and on top of buildings--can supplement our diets with fresh local produce. Denver's suburbs, for instance, have organized to preserve and cultivate unsold tract home lots for community garden food production.

Think in terms of inter-related systems

If we view our urban areas as living, breathing entities--each with a set of basic and more specialized requirements--we can better understand how to transform our communities from random configurations into dynamic, high-performance systems. The "metabolism" of urban systems depends largely on how energy, water, food and materials are acquired, used and, where possible, reused. From these ingredients and processes (labor, use of knowledge) come products, services, and--if the system is efficient--minimal waste and pollution.

Communities and regions should decide among themselves which initiatives reduce their risks and provide the greatest "bang for the buck." Like the emergence of Wall Street's financial derivatives crisis in 2007, if we are kept in the dark about the potential consequences of our planning, resource and energy use in light of climate change or energy shortages, future conditions will threaten whole regional economies when they emerge.

Imagine if Las Vegas informed its residents and tourists on one 120-degree summer day that they would not be able to use a swimming pool or shower, let alone golf, because there simply wasn't any water left.

Odds are that the days are numbered for having one's own swimming pool and a large, lush ornamental lawn in the desert Southwest, unless new developments and desert cities are planned with water conservation as having the highest design priority.

By thinking of urban areas as inter-related systems economically dependent on water, energy, food and vital material resources, communities can begin to prepare for a more secure future. Merely developing a list of topics that need to be addressed--the "checklist" approach--will not prepare regional economies for the complexity of new dynamics, such as energy or water supply shortages, rising population, extreme energy price volatility and accelerating changes in regional climate influenced by global climate change.

Next Steps? Time to fold the climate action plan into a resilience action plan, so communities can addresses not only global climate change emissions, but also more urgent economic risks posed by climate change adaptation and resource availability.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Cities at 4:43 PM)

A blue-collar business embraces a green stormwater fix.

by Lisa Stiffler

Editor's note 3/9: This profile is now available in PDF format here.

On Seattle’s 8th Avenue South in the Georgetown neighborhood, empty school buses and recycling trucks rumble by. Semis squeeze past each other. Cars are parked on the street’s gravel shoulder amid shoe-soaking pools of muddy rainwater.

Georgetown’s busted streets and heavy-duty manufacturing plants seem like the last place where earth-friendly, sustainable stormwater solutions would take root. But this is the story of blue-collar industry partnering with a green-thinking community group to benefit them both. The trouble is, it was an unnecessarily long and challenging route to get the project done.

The century-old Markey Manufacturing Co. is a neighborhood institution, cranking out marine winches used to tow barges and haul anchors out of the sea.

But Seattle’s heavy rains were threatening to disrupt Markey’s operations by pocking the company’s driveway with gaping potholes, creating a perilous obstacle course for forklift drivers maneuvering their cargo.

“It was becoming a real safety issue,” said Bob LeCoque, Markey’s vice president. “We had a couple of loads drop off.”

The potholes are now gone, replaced with two paved driveways and three long, shallow ditches that catch the rain. The ditches, or swales, are lined with sand, soil, and plants that soak up the water.

When it rains, it puddles

Throughout most of Seattle, when the rain falls on roofs and streets, it’s shunted away by gutters and pipes. This area of Georgetown, however, is something of an anomaly; before the swales were built, there was no infrastructure to handle the stormwater and prevent flooding. When it rained, the water sat in puddles that took days or weeks to evaporate. Or it streamed over the industrial landscape into the nearby Duwamish River, carrying with it toxic pollutants and mud.

LeCoque wanted to pave Markey’s potholes, but city regulators opposed the plan unless something was done to address the potential increase in runoff that the paving could bring. LeCoque could lay hundreds of feet of pipe to connect with the existing King County stormwater system at the end of the street – at the cost of more than $1 million.

While Markey was trying to resolve its stormwater troubles, a community group comprised of nearby businesses, residents, local government employees, and others was working to improve the area through an effort called the Georgetown Riverview Restoration Project.The group teamed up with LeCoque to create a plan that was more environmentally friendly and cheaper than traditional stormwater infrastructure. They proposed what was essentially a large rain garden in the heart of one of Seattle’s grittiest industrial zones.

With help from Seattle’s Department of Transportation, Markey and the community group built three swales along the front of the Markey site, the largest stretching 60 feet long and 14 feet wide. The swales were dug about 2 feet deep, then refilled with 3 inches of soil and sand. The swales were ringed with wood chips and are still being planted with trees, grasses, and shrubs that can tolerate soaking wet soil in the winter and drought conditions in the summer.

“We’re trying to recreate what’s in the forest,” said Cari Simson, project manager with the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition who helped lead the effort.“Obviously, we’re way removed from the forest.”

Innovative -- and slow going

The innovative project – which is being hailed as Seattle’s first “industrial strength” natural drainage – is getting plenty of kudos now. But being the first of its kind, the project was tough to get done.

“It was a huge struggle,” said Shauna Walgren, a planner with Seattle’s Department of Transportation. There were months of meetings and countless questions about how it would work and what sort of precedent would be set.

“When you’re trying to do something different,” Walgren said, “the city doesn’t have experience to draw from."

Walgren helped coordinate between the multiple city departments involved and was key to getting approval for the plan, Simson said. The project, which started in 2007, was nearly derailed over concerns that the dirt to be excavated for the swales was contaminated with toxic chemicals. Fortunately, tests showed it wasn’t too polluted, and the swales were dug in October 2009.

Designing and excavating the swales close to $40,000, paid for by the Department of Transportation. The Georgetown Community Council working with the nonprofit Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition spent an additional $20,000 on soil for the swales, plants, designs, and other support. Markey Machinery paid roughly $35,000 to pave the driveways and add new sidewalks. Total bill? Under $100,000, a bargain compared to the price tag for a traditional stormwater system.

No more need for hip waders

Simson and others want to replicate the project in other industrial centers that also lack stormwater infrastructure, such as parts of Seattle’s South Park and SODO neighborhoods. As the Markey example shows, natural drainage can be a cheaper fix than building traditional pipes and stormwater holding tanks. Plus, it’s better for the environment because it re-greens areas with mostly native plants, and the swales and retention ponds actually clean the stormwater by allowing it to percolate into the ground.

But this kind of project won’t become more widespread unless the city makes it faster and easier to get approval for this sort of effort, said some of those involved. City departments – including Seattle’s Department of Transportation, Public Utilities, and Department of Planning and Development – need to work better together and make clear who is responsible for which decisions and permits, community members said. Even city officials said Seattle should create a standardized protocol for doing industrial projects like this one, and appoint someone to help a business navigate the process. Another way to encourage more industrial strength, low-impact development is through financial incentives -- grants, tax breaks, or a cut to utility bills -- for green stormwater solutions.

Before the swales and driveways were installed, Markey was a muddy mess in the winter and LeCoque was loath to host visitors. “The place looked like hell,” he said. That’s changed.

“I can walk from my car to my office without hip waders on,” LeCoque said. “We’re pretty proud of what we’ve done on the site here.”

Learn more about industrial stormwater fixes

The Duwamish River Clean-up Coalition and EOS Alliance are hosting a panel discussion and meeting about natural drainage projects in the Seattle area. It's free to attend, and here are the details:

• WHEN: Wednesday, March 10, from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
• WHERE: EOS Alliance Offices, 650 South Orcas St., Suite 220, Seattle
• RSVP: Email bkantner@eosalliance.org, re: "Green Forum"
  

For more information, go to the Community Natural Drainage Forum website, or email Ben Kantner at EOS Alliance at bkantner@eosalliance.org or call 206-762-2553.

Photos of 8th Avenue South and the Markey Manufacturing Co. swales are used with permission from Laura Treadway.

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 4:19 PM)

A climate action lesson from Denmark


There's been a lot of ambitious talk lately about carbon neutrality. It's exciting stuff, but it's worth pausing to consider just how huge that challenge is. And what, precisely, does it mean? Zero emissions, or lots of offsets? 

I thought it was interesting to take a look at the climate action plan(PDF) from the city of Copenhagen. It's certainly a contender for the title of the greenest and most progressive city on earth, and it's a city that has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025. But what you find is that even for the Danes, carbon neutrality is more aspirational than actionable:

By implementing the climate plan’s contributions – and assisted by the expected developments – we expect to reduce Copenhagen’s CO2 emissions from 2,500,000 tonnes CO2 today to about 1,150,000 tonnes in 2025. To become completely neutral we must also remove just as much CO2 as we produce. We will need to compensate for the 1,150,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2025 by for example investing in still more windmills, use new technologies or plant forests which absorb CO2.

In other words, even Copenhagen doesn't have a plan to achieve zero emissions. They'll rely on what amounts to offsets for over a million tons of CO2, roughly half of their current carbon footprint.

Still, their goals are astonishing: Copenhagen has an action plan to cut their already-low emissions in half over the next 15 years. Wow. That will be a signal achievement, and one that will no doubt provide valuable lessons for us in the Northwest, both in terms of strategies to reduce our emissions as well some clearer notion of what it means to be "carbon neutral."

Applying Copenhagen's achievement here in the Northwest makes for an interesting comparison because, as it happens, the city of Copenhagen is roughly the same size as the three big cities in the Northwest. Seattle emitted around 6.7 million tons of CO2 in 2008; Multnomah County, home to Portland, emitted about 8.5 million tons that year; while Vancouver claimed just over 2.5 million tons. (It’s important to keep in mind that these inventories measure different things in different ways, so comparisons between the numbers are not informative. For example, Vancouver’s number refers to a much narrower scope.) If each city followed Copenhagen’s lead and reduced its emissions by half -- a phenomenal achievement -- Seattle would need to offset more than 3 million tons of CO2, Multnomah-Portland more than 4 million tons, and Vancouver well over 1 million tons.

If Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver do as Copenhagen does, and succeed in cutting their emissions in half over the next 20 years, that will be worth shouting from the green rooftops. But even so, to reach carbon neutrality we’d be talking about somewhere in the range of $160 million dollars of investment annually by the cities for various carbon offset projects (assuming a price of $20 a ton for offsets). That’s a lot of money. And it’s an open question, at least to my mind, whether achieving “carbon neutrality” for a specific city for a specific point in time would really the best use of that money.

Now, in fairness, for all the hand-wringing they induce from people like me, offsets are not necessarily a bad idea. At their best, they can foster important advancements for developing countries, low-cost emissions saving in farm country, or ecological restoration. On the other hand, $160 million might be better spent making investments in strategies to further reduce emissions locally, even if those advancements wouldn't result in carbon neutrality. Yet on the third hand, it’s not exactly clear how to achieve those further reductions; even Copenhagen doesn't yet have a plan. I’d say we’re in a pickle.

Now before everyone accuses me of being a giant kill-joy, I should add that there are at least two reasons that a community may want to aim to be “carbon neutral,” even if what that really means is big offset purchases to supplement local carbon reductions.

Reason #1: “80% below 1990 levels by 2050” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So even if we don’t know what “carbon neutral” looks like, it seems somehow easier for people to get their heads around conceptually. People are inspired by the idea of carbon neutrality in a way that they clearly aren’t by “the terms of the Kyoto Protocol” or “80%.”

Reason #2: We need something to push us -- our elected officials, our businesses, and individuals -- to think big. Really big. If, as a planet, we’re going to achieve climate stability, the time for incremental change has passed. As Knute Berger put it yesterday when he proposed removing a major bridge in the Seattle area: “Why, in the 21st Century, aren't we repairing and restoring the environmental damage of the past instead of doubling down on it?”

That could be the kind of question people ask under the “carbon neutral” banner.

Yet I’m wary. The really game-changing climate policies are simply not at a neighborhood or city scale. They’re at the national and global scale – comprehensive and enforceable carbon limits or pricing.

While local areas can incubate ideas and build supportive constituencies, our climate action won’t ultimately add up to much unless it is comprehensive and much, much larger. So city-level aspiration should not be allowed to redirect our attention from national policy -- it should be leveraged to reinforce the big stuff. 

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by Eric De Place in Climate Change at 4:08 PM)

There was a time, not long ago, when the idea of a national low-carbon growth strategy for India would have been hard to imagine. "Low carbon" was seen to be at loggerheads with India's ambitious economic development agenda and was too controversial a concept to find voice in domestic politics. Yet in January 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituted a 26-member expert group to help develop a low-carbon growth strategy for India. The group, which hosts a formidable array of government, industry, academia, and civil society members, is being chaired by Dr. Kirit Parikh, former member of India's Planning Commission.

Worldwatch Fellow Anna da Costa interviewed Dr. Parikh about the group's plans for the coming year, and how India's efforts at home to address climate change are moving forward.

What led to the Low Carbon Expert Group being constituted?

I think it's quite clear that India realized it is vulnerable. It is in its great interest to have an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions, and from our own energy security point of view, there are many things we should do to move to low carbon growth. [We are interested in] whatever measures we can take that can stimulate and nudge the global community into a global agreement, are also in our interests. This leads us to examine the options, the costs, the alternatives, and the multiple benefits of moving to a low-carbon development pathway.

What types of recommendations can we expect to emerge from the group, and how will this work differ from or connect to India's National Action Plan on Climate Change?

The National Action Plan outlines the long-term measures that we should take. It doesn't have the required specificity in terms of what needs to be done, and we hope the low-carbon strategy will provide more detailed guidelines as to what measures can be taken. India has committed to meet a reduction in national energy intensity of 25 percent by 2020. We need to work out a strategy and the various specific measures that will enable us to meet this.

This seems like a major task. Is all of the analysis being conducted by the Expert Group or are you outsourcing certain elements?

The expert group, which has 26 members, has a very wide-ranging set of expertise. It is a wide group of stakeholders, many of whom have been working on this subject for a long time. We will pool the knowledge that exists [in the group] and put together a menu of what is possible. Time is very short, so we cannot do any further new research as such. We are very open to get any outside help, or contributions. We will put these recommendations out in an open, transparent manner, put them on the website, seek comments, and so on, and might even hold a public consultation on them at some stage.

Do you think the 25-percent energy intensity target you mention, that was announced by India before the Copenhagen climate conference, can be met with the current National Action Plan strategy?

You know, there are many things we are doing already. India's energy intensity has been coming down in any case. Business-as-usual projections should provide a fairly large part of the reduction we want to achieve. A little more effort should bring [energy intensity] down to the 25-percent [target]. I don't think there should be that much of a challenge or difficulty in doing that.

Is the aim of the low-carbon expert group to reduce India's emissions beyond what would likely occur on a business-as-usual trajectory?

It's to make sure we meet the 25-percent reduction in carbon intensity, to see if we can even do more and what kind of support we will need to reach that target. What can we do? What is win-win? What policies do we need? Are there barriers? Do we need finance? These are the kinds of questions that we need to answer.

A few years ago, it seems as though using the words "low-carbon development" as an element of India's political vocabulary would have been politically untenable. What has enabled this change, and does it signify a fundamental shift in thinking on the issue of climate change and development in India?

This is difficult to answer. I think you could give a lot of credit to the Prime Minister, who felt that although the rigid stand we had been taking in the past was morally and ethically correct, we need to get the logjam moving and should take some initiative. That is why at the Gleneagles conference [of the G8 in 2005, which India, China, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa attended], he promised that we are determined to have our per-capita emissions never exceed those of industrialized countries. The Western world didn't think that was any commitment, but if you think about it, that... itself was a major commitment. Why? Because if we want to reach [greenhouse gas concentrations of ] 450 parts per million by 2050, the average of industrialized countries will come to 2.5 to 3 tons per capita, and India will have to restrict itself to 3 tons per capita, which is a huge commitment.... So we are very willing to get the process moving. We are interested in getting a global agreement. That is part of the strategy. Let's get the process moving.

How likely is it that the recommendations of the Low Carbon Expert Group be implemented? What factors will need to be in place to see this happen?

I've chaired enough committees to know that not all recommendations get implemented. There are always political considerations. There are always stakeholders who have vested interests of various kinds. How things play out is a very different thing. So I would not say that I expect all of our recommendations will be implemented. What is important about these expert committees and groups is that they create a consensus and awareness amongst people, so that in due course things change and pick up.

Do you have a sense of how much India's low-carbon strategy is estimated to cost? To what degree is the government self-funding these initiatives, and how much is it hoped that finance will also come from the private sector and international public funds?

My feeling is that there are lots of things we can do that pay for themselves and don't involve any additional costs but have multiple benefits. Energy efficiency, for example, pays for itself. I think there are many [options] like that, but of course finance is required upfront, too. Without such finance we know that many economically attractive actions are not taken up by industry and individuals. But I cannot answer this question until we have done our work.

In your long experience working on India's economic development, you must have seen many kinds of sustainable development solutions. What are some of the most transformative solutions that you believe exist for India?

I think there are three solutions that show [particular] potential for the goal of sustainable development. One is definitely solar technology, and making its cost competitive with coal as soon as possible. That could bring a hugely transformative change. Second would be a major program of rainwater harvesting and watershed development. This could transform the whole water and agricultural scenario and is clearly of importance. Thirdly, if one were to speak in terms of the future, maybe the development of cellulosic ethanol that could make India truly energy independent in a realsense. This is looking [at the question] from the energy sustainability perspective.

But there are many, many things that have contributed to India's inclusive development. Inclusion is critical for sustainability. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which began in Maharashtra and is now across the country. You could say the Gram Swarojgar Yojana [a rural micro enterprise initiative] is also transformative. You might say that if you can get 100-percent literacy and school attendance for all children up to 14 years, that could be transformative. There are many things that we could do that really could make a tremendous difference to the economy. Of course, support for public transport in major metro areas can also be transformative.

Global negotiations tend to focus on what India needs to absorb from other parts of the world, particularly in terms of finance and technology. But do you feel there are areas where India has a lot to share with other countries in terms of global efforts to combat climate change and shift toward sustainability?

It is very clear that India is not just an absorber of technologies; it can really be a generator, inventor, and developer. Again, I support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's suggestion at Gleneagles that we should set up a network of collaborative institutions at the international level like the Agricultural Research Institutes under the [Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR].... If we can have that kind of institutional set-up for low-carbon or renewable technology and have the IPRs [intellectual property rights] shared globally as global public goods, that could be very important.... India can also contribute to the development of the technologies. So in some sense we may have an actual interest in IPR protection, but on the other hand from the global point of view, we think some of these should be made globally available as global public goods.

Anna da Costa is a Worldwatch Institute research fellow based in New Delhi, India.

This article is a product of Eye on Earth, the Worldwatch Institute's online news service.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 3:41 PM)

More than one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumer goods used in developed nations is actually emitted in other nations where the products are made, according to a new study. In the U.S., about 2.5 tons of carbon produced per person annually — or about 11 percent of U.S. per capita emissions — are emitted elsewhere, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science say. In Europe, it’s about four tons of carbon per person. In fact, in smaller European nations like Switzerland, the emissions associated with products manufactured outside the borders exceed the actual emissions produced at home.

Click to enlarge

Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science'Outsourcing' Carbon Emissions

Using 2004 trade data from 113 countries and regions, the authors of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were able to construct a global model of the flow of “imported” and “exported” emissions, most of which are “outsourced” to developing nations. The biggest “importer” by far is China, they said. “Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China,” said lead author Steven Davis.

This article originally appeared on Yale e360

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(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Climate Change at 3:32 PM)

http://blog.eventful.com/

March 10, 2010

SXSW Partiers can use Augmented Reality to find the coolest events (((it had to happen, so I’m blogging it even though it’s a press release)))

One of the great things about my job is that I get to work with all of the cool new applications that are using Eventful’s API to integrate event data into their services.

I am pleased to introduce the first augmented reality platform to integrate Eventful event data including event locations and event details right into the application. It is being launched at the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. All you SXSW partiers need to do is hold your mobile phone (iPhone 3Gs to start) up and events will be overlaid on the live-view of the camera. It will point you in the right direction to find the hot parties. (((Or, you can find some geek willing to do this for you, and then you can beat him up and go to the party yourself after stealing his girlfriend. And his Android.)))

Check out all the details in the press release here.

Not at SXSW? Relax. (((No! Don’t relax! Fear! Be paralyzed with fear! They are creating your future without you! You’re outside the social-media loop! Soon you will die.)))

The Eventful data covers the world and this application will work in most cities. The platform is called junaio and it is the first mass consumer platform from a company called metaio, (((what’s with the lower cases))) a leader in the growing field of augmented reality. Click here to learn more about junaio and get the application in the iTunes store. Or just search junaio on your iPhone.

Augmented reality is going to be big so don’t delay and get in on the next big thing today.

Tim Breidigan, VP of Business Development
Posted by wil at 11:03 AM

*”We have dragons, helicopters and Elvises”