Climate Change pt 3 - Suburbs

The aspect of this climate change lecture I attended that I really questioned was that creating more dense urban environments would lower vehicle miles traveled and thereby CO2 emissions and that this would be good for slowing/stopping climate change.

But if more people move into the cities and create denser environments won't we be puching out the people who are already there. There is data to suggest that the new move into the cities is concentrated in the middle and upper class, which would mean the displacement of the lower classes that currently reside in cities. These poor people will be pushed out into the suburbs where housing prices are cheaper. From there they will have to drive into the cities for work, most likely with older cars that are not as fuel efficient. Since there are a lot more poor people than rich people and they will all be driving now the whole climate change benefit will be negated.

Although climate change will not be affected by this development some other things will. Emergency services, and various social welfare opereations currently opperate mostly in cities where their clientele are, mostly concentrated and with access to public transportation. What will happen when the people who need these services are more spread out and there isn't good public transit?
What will happen to the bedroom communities which have little to no industry when the majority of the population needs more service, but can pay the taxes?
Will the McMansions be converted into apartments like the old Victorian and Edwardian mansions in most downtown areas; and will zoning allow for such a thing?

This change in spatial distribution of economic class will have a lot of long range effects and I worry that no one is really thinking about it.

Climate Change pt2 People

So, now that we have gone over the fact that the threat to plants and animals doesn't bother me we will move on to some people issues.

With the types of problems that should be happening with climate change a lot of people are going to die or be injured. I think that there is a fair amount of this that is needless. Most of the needless deaths will be those people who for reasons that I don't understand refuse to move out of harms way.

We have seen people in the news who won't move out of the way, and I don't just mean those who move away for good, because there is no place that is safe from every natural disaster (well, I heard of a study conducted once to find the safest place to live in the states when thinking about natural disasters and it was rural Vermont or New Hampshire.) The west coast has earthquakes, the west has drought and wildfires, the central states have drought then flooding then more drought, then there are the hurricanes, tornados, ice storms, and avalanches, for other areas. The point is that there are few if any places to truly get away for a long time, but there are things to do to mitigate risk. Like evacuating when asked (though not necessarily to where the government wants you to.) Having a plan to get out of the way when something is going to happen, or after it happens should save lots of lives.

Another thing to mitigate the destruction of natural disaster is to practice better stewardship of the land we are on. Development on islands that used to take the brunt of storms weakens entire area, so does the draining of swamps, or not allowing rivers to change course occasionally. Nature itself often creates systems to allow for a quick return to homeostasis, and if we work with those systems instead of creating our own we would be in much better shape.

But the big problem is those people who haven't the resources to plan, or remove themselves from disaster. I think of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in the world, where people die by the thousands every year in floods. With global climate change and rising sea levels that country will be loosing more land, leading to increased crowding, poorly made environments and compounding deaths due to natural disasters. 

In our own country there are more resources for providing for the poor, or enfeebled, opportunities available to get them out of harms way.

In the lecture I talked about in the preceding post one long term strategy was to create denser urban environments so that all people would contribute less to climate change, and so that goods and services would be more easily distributed after disasters.

My question was that wouldn't denser environments pose potentially greater threats to human health and well being, and also contribute to climate change?

When people are crowded together disease spreads more rapidly leading to greater illness and death. There is also the urban heat island effect where dense areas become a few degrees hotter then the surrounding area leading to severely localized micro-climates which have more intense weather, and weather related disaster. Also with heat islands the infirm die at greater rates (remember continental europe a few years ago?), as well as children.

I say this not because I do or do not think that dense urban environments are better than sprawl, I am just saying that there are so many ramifications to any major shift in how people interact with the environment that plans and policy need to be well thought out and strategies should try to address the problems foreseen by the solution to the current problems. And part of that is identifying the actual motivations we have for solving a problem. 

It makes me think of a new despair.com tag "Government: If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions."

Climate Change pt1 flora and fauna

I went to a lecture yesterday about urban sprawl and climate change. The essence of the presentation was that by listening to current trends and creating more compact urban spaces we can reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and that this would in turn lower CO2 and help stabilize the climate.

I had two questions during the presentation (this post deals with the first one) 1- by creating more dense environments wont we be creating other climate change due to the urban heat island effect; and 2- there was a statement that market forces are clambering for more dense places, but if this is unevenly distributed demographically then wont all of the potential gains be for nought?

My thoughts on question 1 really have to do with what is the fear motivating action to limit climate change. As I understand it with a global rise in mean temperature major weather events (like strong hurricanes, flooding, drought and wildfires) will become more common, extinctions will occur at a fast pace, area of the world will be rendered uninhabitable and there will be a lot of habitat change for plants and animals.

A lot of the issues don't seem like that big of a deal to me, mostly the changes in habitat, and diversity. Change is a part of what happens constantly on this planet, and extinction is a fairly common thing to have happen. I have heard arguments that this is different because it is happening at such a fast pace that there is no time for adaptation to happen. That argument, I think, is based in old, linear evolutionary thinking whereas now a model of punctuated equilibrium seems better, where lots of mutation and evolution occurs rapidly followed by a period of more stable linear evolution. So even if there is a mass die off, the availability of resources will allow the survivors to flourish and diversify to the new environment.

A lot of the issue seems to be that we don't want things to change. It is like a community rants and raves about a new development in their area, not necessarily for any reason other than nothing like that has been there before. Change is inevitable.

Of course the other reason may be guilt that thing are dying and it is all our fault, but thankfully I don't seem to suffer from that particular malady.