The next round of community conversations for the update of PlaNYC was announced. For more on the update process see my post on PlaNYC 2.0. The schedule for upcoming meetings is:

Upper Manhattan
Monday, December 6th, 2010
7:00PM – 9:00PM
State Office Building 2nd Flr. Gallery
163 West 125th Street, (enter on 126th)
A, B, C, D, 2, 3,4,5,6 trains to 125th
Community Partner: WEACT

Eastern Queens
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
7:00PM – 9:00PM
Bayside High School
32-24 Corporal Kennedy Street, Bayside NY 11361

South Brooklyn
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
6:00PM – 8:00PM
St. Michael’s RC Church, 352 42nd Street,
Enter at Auditorium on 43rd St.
R train to 45th and the D,N,R to 36th
Community Partner: UPROSE

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle is proud that Brooklyn is featured prominently in PlaNYC imagery.

The C40 Climate Leadership Group met in November Hong Kong for a workshop titled Low Carbon Cities for High Quality Living. The group consists of leaders from large cities around the world committed to tackling global climate change.  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was elected chair of the group. The group’s website includes informative sections on best practices and climate action plans from around the world.

Lastly, in a recent post about the ongoing climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, Andrew Revkin (author of NY Times DotEarth blog) mourns the absence of Ted Kheel and his conflict resolution skills.

The New York Times reports that Paterson administration officials said they “hoped that Andrew M. Cuomo, the governor-elect, would use it as a guide in promoting a shift to clean energy in New York State.” The NYTimes article also comments on Paterson administration actions that have cut funds to state environmental organizations tasked with accomplishing the very goals outlined in the Climate Action Council’s report.

Yes, New York State is in an unprecedented budget crisis, but the governor’s own report calls for turning “climate policy into an engine for economic growth.” The logic of this report, and of PlaNYC, and many other green house gas reduction plans is that it makes long-term economic sense to go green. Let’s hope governor-elect Cuomo has the foresight to restore environmental funding and invest even more into green initiatives that will reduce carbon emissions and strengthen the economy at the same time. Better yet, let’s make sure Cuomo moves forward with the goals of Climate Action Council report.

Submit your comments on the website: http://www.nyclimatecomments.us/ or send written comments to:

Climate Action Plan
NYSERDA
17 Columbia Circle
Albany, NY 12203-6399

Sign up for the Climate Action Plan mailing list (listserve) (under “Contact Us” on the left hand side) to receive direct notification of an informational webinar, public hearings and other information related to the Climate Action Plan.

Contact governor-elect Cuomo via his campaign website: http://www.andrewcuomo.com/contact

Via NY Times

An opinion piece in the Times, Disaster at the Top of the World by Thomas Homer-Dixon, a prominent thinker on resource scarcity and rising conflict–reminds us that it will be nearly impossible to mobilize people on the issue of climate change legislation because our identities and how we see ourselves in the world is more important than the truth of what is happening, or in other words, our identities shape how we react to the severity of the issue. But eventually, we will have a clear, present and dangerous crisis that will be directly linked to climate change. 2010, shaping up to be the hottest year on record, full with drought, fire, and flooding is perhaps still not enough. Dixon reminds us that a, “key lesson of the recent financial crisis: when powerful special interests have convinced much of the public that what they’re doing isn’t dangerous, only a disaster that discredits those interests will provide an opportunity for comprehensive policy change like the Dodd-Frank financial regulations…Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits.”

So, what are we to do? Wait for the disaster and have a plan for it? Essentially, yes.  It seems like a nice compromise between proactivity and reactivity: Be prepared to react. He cites a Harvard publication from 2009, Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes, but says that this report and others like it are the exception and not the norm and efforts remain uncoordinated.

Most climate scientists believe that we have a shrinking window of time to address this issue. But this think piece almost recommends that we let the window close and figure out how to hack it after. Scale the wall, climb the fire escape, etc. The biggest question then is, do we really need to enter into the crisis era before anything actually changes? I believe there are countless opportunities to use environmental challenges as democracy building exercises and opportunities, invoking crowd sourcing technologies and the like. But on this issue, I might actually be okay with the benevolent dictator who has all of our best interests in mind when the crisis, whatever it may be, actually hits.  In the meantime, we can and should continue to do the work we do to look at the decisions of our lives as potential landscapes for sustainability. Let this, define us. And let this, be our identity.

There is a chorus of media coverage on what is going wrong in Copenhagen. From walk outs to private jetting to arrested protests, it really is starting to look a bit like an act of the Theater of the Absurd. The most basic definition of absurd in this reference, “takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by an invisible outside force.” I leave this open to you for interpretation.

But beyond the theatrics and arrests, a somewhat more quiet–and active–group of people are meeting to talk about the role of cities in climate change and sustainable development. The Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors began today. CISC Director Bill Solecki is there and will be participating in tomorrow afternoon’s panel discussion on the work being done in NYC. He joins the Mayors of 80 cities ranging from leaders of Dar Es Salaam to Delhi, from Melbourne to Mexico City.

The work of local and municipal governments plays an interesting role when their goals and standards are potentially higher than that of state, federal, or international ambitions. New York City  is a particularly interesting example when it comes to the energy leviathan that is the United States. Residents of the Big Apple already have about one third the carbon footprint than that of their fellow Americans. And we are seeking to cut these emissions further.  Perhaps these initiatives are possible because there is political–and scientific–support for the cause. Seventy eight percent of New Yorkers believe climate change is happening compared to 36% nationally. And 60% of us say that we worry a great deal about climate change. I wonder if there are similar differences in national and city specific numbers elsewhere. (Any information on that would be appreciated if readers have it. The Guardian reports that 3 out of 4 Britons fear climate change, so I guess London or other cities would need to be 4 out of 4 for this to hold true in England…)

There are a lot of political and socio-economical considerations to take into account for why this divide might exist, specifically in the United States. Purely from anecdotal evidence–although there is rigorous methodology that shows the same thing–cities and their metropolitan regions are generally wealthier and sometimes more politically progressive than their suburban or rural counterparts. Is that why climate change and sustainability legislation is more successful here? Constituents see climate change as real, current, and dangerous, which means they have an interest in addressing it–or they have support for their leaders to address it. Elsewhere, if people are not immediately concerned, political will diminishes.

This is all speculation. But I doubt we will see walk outs from the Mayors Conference similar to the likes of what we have seen in the general summit. Beijing and New York won’t spar on differences. Rather they might learn something from each other. Perhaps it is because their constituents want them to…If I was in Copenhagen, I would focus on the cities. And the art.

Home sweet home.

The event itself was a leap of faith and a reminder that extraordinary things come with minimal fine print, directions or user guides. Participants (and planners might I add) had relatively little knowledge of what kind of event we were getting into save for a few listed highlights: Wally Broecker’s attendance–for those who do not know, he coined the term climate change and is a grandfather of climate science–and a provocation speech by Jeffrey Sachs on day 2. Other than that,  discussions populated the agenda. And we in turn populated the discussions.  This was an “open-space” conference format. Open-space facilitated conferences came out of event feedback where participants would continually say, “The best portion was lunch or the conversation I had at the bar…” So, the idea is, why not have  a conference where we can have one long lunch session? Why not have an event where we can decide what we want to talk or learn about? And as our adept and quite funny facilitator pointed out, “There was no Plan B.”

Breakout sessions over the 2 days included: creating direct collaborations between artists and scientists, public experiments, practicality, dealing artfully with climate contrarians, Antarctica vs. the Wall St. Journal Editorial Board, putting the public to work, and many many more delightfully spontaneous themes that bridged the science and art nexus.

Major themes that meant something to me. 1 – Climate Change is not yet understood or deeply cared about by most Americans. (Only 36% of Americans believe climate change is human caused, down from 47% in April of 2008.) 2 – We have no ethical framework to deal with climate change, since our usual ethical framework does not deal with the future. 3 – We need to express collective responsibility and action. If climate change threats could be controlled regionally, would we be more willing to deal with it? 4 – Changing light-bulbs is not enough. We have failed miserably on the solution side of things. 5 – Climate Change is already effecting the world’s most vulnerable citizens. When there are droughts in California, we have water restrictions. When droughts occur in Ethiopia, people perish. 6 – More people need to dedicate their lives to solving this issue because it is THE issue of our lives. And if (when) they do join, they have an army of inspired, able and down right fabulous  individuals to work with.

Jeffrey Sachs, after explaining that geologists have given the official ok, after official testing, to use the term Anthropocene Epoch-a new human driven geological epoch that has replaced the Holocene Epoch of the last 12,000 years–reminded us that a world with 9 billion people will be crowded. But this is not the time to start asking for a return to a simple existence with nature. People will die before and when this happens. This is the time to understand that humans have now taken over the entire operating system of the planet. It no longer controls itself. Think about that…

Regarding the sense of shared responsibility, I want to leave you with a thought about tipping points for a moment. Few of the things said over this weekend moved me more than the idea that we might come to a point where we have to tell our children, or our mothers and brothers, “We wrecked it.” We inherited something flawed and instead of re-envisioning it or re-configuring it to a better state, we killed it. There is no turning back, there is no chance to fix this.

We can not begin to imagine what this means. We can begin to read about it, but sit and think for one moment about what it might mean to really go beyond the threshold of this earth, to be the last weight needed to tip the scale, so we can never return to what once was. How will we feel about carbon taxing or climate change politics then?

According to Sachs–and climate scientists–more research is needed on what exactly this tipping point might be. But what we do know is that all humans (many to a FAR greater extent) have somehow moved us to where we are in the progression toward no return. We, through no fault of our own, have inherited this legacy in the name of economic development and certain modes of production. And we need to deal with that, in the hopes that those after us will inherit our legacy and deal accordingly with it. If we do not, the fault certainly is our own. We must take the responsibilities of our time which clearly is much more than the sum of our contemporary parts.

While the content of the weekend’s events were certainly worth fearing–thinking about the sheer power of one species to have changed the geological era in which we live is frightening–I do believe that the more positive and hopeful contributions we might make to our human-controlled planet override the fear. The simple fact that this event existed, that we have minds as great as our problems and creativity as limitless as the number of people on this planet must mean something.  The biggest take away from the weekend’s event for me: We must remain–or become–passionate about the world in which we live. It is beautiful in ways that we may not fully understand , but that we now control.

Clouding the skies of the apparent optimism surrounding Copenhagen, however, is the developing “climate file” controversy.  Andy Revkin, of Dot Earth, has provided the most lucid coverage of this unfolding debacle but there doesn’t appear to be much musing about how it might effect the actual proceedings at the summit.  Sure, “climate skeptics” have now secured copious amounts of fodder for their arguments, but will the controversy cast significant shadows over Copenhagen?

Via Environment Canada

Talking shop on climate change and making sure people understand what you’re trying to convey–and more importantly that they care about what you’re trying to convey–is not an easy feat.  This last part–the caring about what you’re saying component–proves even more difficult in a weak economy. When President Obama first took office in 2009, while we were still in economic free fall mode, environmental protection and climate change ranked at the bottom of the list of concerns of most Americans. And just last month, Pew published shocking results that fewer Americans see solid evidence of climate change or that the problem is serious. In April of 2008, 44% of those surveyed believed it was a serious issue. This fall, the number went down to 35%. This less than 10% drop might not seem that significant, but what if we lose 9% again this time next year? As the climate crisis deepens, public support becomes more shallow.

Thanks to the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, a new guide has been published on “The Psychology of Climate Change Communication.” Part cognitive science based, part climate science, this publication serves as a guide to researchers, educators, journalists and really anyone who wants to teach anything about climate change. It is divided into a natural progression of sections, beginning with Know Your Audience and ending with Make Behavior Change Easier.  And while we certainly have seen plenty of go green tips from everyone including Exxon-Mobil, this guide really tries to help educators break through the barriers they may unknowingly be creating, while trying to each.

For example, in the Know Your Audience section, we learn that part of the climate change comprehension problem is that we have certain mental models that help us to understand the world and situations around us. Massive barrier number one:  we don’t have a mental model that climate change fits into. And since we tend to shy away from things we can’t make sense of–rather than create a new paradigm, framework or mode of operation–we can’t engage with it.  Quite often, we come up with questions, games, visualizations for people to better understand climate change, but we haven’t yet constructed–or pondered–a new mental model for it which enables these answers to be meaningfully processed.

While the publication is based on climate change communication, there are plenty of other disciplines that could use help in turning the scientific into something publicly palatable. You can download the report for free or request a paper copy. But check it out. Let’s not get to a point where only 26% of Americans take climate change seriously.

She opened her discussion by saying that as she made her way South to the conference,  from her home up the Hudson, she imagined herself as part of the crew of Hudson’s ship, The Half Moon. But this wasn’t in 1609, it is in 2109.  She then proceeded to talk about climate change effects in the region and what one might see on a ship in the year 2109. Besides being an imaginative and inspiring close to a wonderful–but long–day, she got me thinking about the decisions we make and the wake that follows them.

When we think about environmental issues, protection, conservation, ecological services, climate change, etc., we are actually dealing with the combined wakes of any type of decision that has been made until now. Essentially, we don’t have a blank canvas. I used this term last week to talk about Detroit. But even there, development and revitalization is only a transition from what something once was. We create new policies and interventions in the wake of other ones.

So, enter Copenhagen, the last chance to create something new and positive in the wake of many other intentional and default decisions on modes of production and how we organize our societies in general.  A few weeks ago, all hope was given up that anything substantial would happen. There would be no binding agreement. Copenhagen would fail, just like Bali, Poland, and most importantly, Kyoto.

As has been reported, the stalled legislation in the United States is not helpful, nor is the boycott of initial talks by developing nations, specifically African ones. The economy is still the bottom line. But today, there were signs of life from the Obama administration that even though Copenhagen may not create the binding agreement we all wished it would, there is still a desire to create a deal that will have an “immediate effect.” Obama has been speaking with Chinese president Hu Jintao about the huge role that the U.S. and China play in creating carbon emissions and the role they must play in reducing them.  Text or not text, the Copenhagen conference seeks to 1) get solid agreements from developed nations on emissions reductions, 2) secure cold hard cash for developing nations to follow suit.  For the full news feed from Reuters, click here.

Yes, there is still concern that Copenhagen will not provide the urgent action needed. But the recognition that Copenhagen can not be a full failure acknowledges that there are decisions to build on, that China and the U.S. are crucial components to the agreement and most importantly, there is a wake that follows in which we all must live.

The British Government recently released a map that forecasts the disastrous scenarios that could play out with a 4 degree (C) rise in temperature across the globe.  It features nine categories of effects (including drought, sea-level rise, and permafrost) which can be toggled on and off.  The selected category tab displays a “hot spot” on the map that comes accompanied with some explanatory text.

The graphics of the map may not be super sleek and the data behind it may not be groundbreaking, but the real significance of the release lies in the official shift in discourse which it represents.  The Guardian reports that until recently politicians have been unwilling to entertain the prospect of failing to stop global warming at the 2 degree mark.  With the Copenhagen talks looming near–talks which Foreign Secretary Miliband described as “the most complicated international negotiations ever attempted”–this release should be understood as an attempt to turn up the heat (sorry, I couldn’t resist!) on Copenhagen.

Via Truetalkblog.com

“With this text, I start a conversation about being on the road to creating a more sustainable city – how are we moving toward that goal – where the bumps are – what are the things to do and who are the people to meet.  This September marked the 400^th anniversary of the visit of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon to the New York harbor and riverine environment. The great work of Eric Sanderson and his Manahatta project presents a virtual reconstruction of what the region looked like on those late summer days in 1609. The city and region were born from the water and grew up around its edges.  Today, in many ways, we have come back full circle from those days. The city and its residents have once again turned to the water’s edge after decades of constructing factories, roads, and facilities on the waterways which cut off access to the shoreline. In the past several years, thousands of new residential housing units have been built on old industrial and transport waterfront lands, and new recreational spaces – arguably as important to the City as the building of Central Park – have been constructed opening shoreline breezes and vistas to many. It is ironic that this re-embrace comes just at a time when climate change and associated sea level rise means that these slices of the urban fabric have become more vulnerable to flooding and inundation from extreme coastal storms such as hurricanes and nor’easters .

The Manahatta Project creates the vision of the Manhattan Island coastline without the ring of landfill that has dramatically increased the girth of the Island over the past centuries. New York City moved out into the waters of the Hudson and East Rivers, out into the tidal marsh headwaters of Jamaica Bay, and dozens of other places over that time. With climate change and sea level rise, some of these low lying lands now face the possibility of increased inundation . Sea level rise rates won’t necessarily mean the loss of wide swaths of this land, but it could result in the loss of some and certainly the more frequent flooding of much it. From the sea and back to the sea. Full Circle.”