HOW COME ORDINARY AMERICANS AREN’T DOING MORE TO MITIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE? TEN REASONS

October 19, 2021

The average American emits 20 tons of greenhouse gases a year. The world average is 3.  We each need to get to 3, or better yet, zero. Even the average person who wants to make a difference and shrink their carbon footprint doesn’t always know what to do or have access to the necessary resources to achieve these goals. A huge amount has been written about climate change and climate-change mitigation, yet very little of it tells the individual how to shrink their carbon footprint to zero or near-zero. Why isn’t this happening? I can see many reasons.

First, it’s overwhelmingly huge, and hard to see where to start. There isn’t a handy guide to what to do in order to get me, and my household, to zero. We know some minor things to do, such as change out all our light bulbs to LEDs, but we don’t know how much that will help. We may have signed up for renewable energy with our local utility, but we don’t know how much that’s helping.

Second, we may not feel we’re responsible. Climate change became a visible threat in our lifetimes, but some – perhaps a lot – of people say, as one of my friends did: “I didn’t consciously make this happen, so it’s not mine to fix, not my fault.” They disown the problem.

Third, upgrading to green is expensive. A rural friend said recently: “We barely get by financially as it is; we work in different directions and each need our own vehicle. Mine’s a truck that my big heavy dog can be loaded into when it’s vet-visit time. When our son hit sixteen, he had to have a vehicle too, and we can’t afford three Teslas, even if we could get such an order delivered in timely way.” And most electric vehicles don’t have much range; with charging stations being scarce and slow, it’s too big a risk of getting stranded.

Personally, I was very pleased to be able to put 21 solar panels on my little 1920s house and take advantage of the 30% federal tax credit when I bought the panels in 2015. In the very first year I got free electricity and more than $1,000 in incentive payment from my state government. But I had come into some capital, and most people don’t have the funds lying around to make this kind of investment.

Fourth, a lot of myths and untruths are floating around. Some folks believe that solar power doesn’t pencil out, not realizing that their neighbor’s investment made 20 years ago is no longer the story – costs of solar panels have dropped so much that installing them pencils out almost immediately, especially with incentive payments.

Fifth, to get full benefit from my solar panels I’d have to go “greener”. It’s not easy retrofitting a 1920s house to be green. I arranged for a professional heat loss study of my little house, and found out that the insulation in the attic was insufficient; the insulation in the walls had sagged and was no longer doing its job; although the windows had been upgraded, they weren’t state-of-the-art; the appliances were old. I had an insurance policy on the house’s infrastructure and when the gas furnace gave up the ghost, this policy paid for a replacement – but only an identical gas furnace. I should have been focused on eliminating gas entirely, since it’s a fossil fuel. But then I’d have had to pay this $4,000 or so myself. I did install some more attic insulation, and got a rebate for doing that, too.

Sixth, not everyone is focused on the common good but on “I want mine”. I was struggling to install a low-flow showerhead and grumbled about the challenge to one of my neighbors. His response was: “What the heck are you doing that for? I’m old, and I want to use as much hot water as I can before I die.” These remarks tie into an underlying fear that going green, cutting one’s own emissions, will mean a lower standard of living. In 2008, an article in Reason magazine explained how, in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to mitigate climate change, we’d all have to go back to the 1870s. No cars, no central heating, no tank of hot water….it was a dismal picture. That journalist didn’t get, however, that green innovations in almost all areas of life mean we can have our cake and eat it – we can live comfortably, even luxuriously, without causing greenhouse gas emissions. That’s even more true today than it was in 2008.

There are other reasons why personal change is not happening much.  Seventh, is climate change denial. Simply put, if global warming is not caused or exacerbated by mankind, then mankind has no obligation to try to fix it. One person, a scientist by training, told me that climate change is coming about because the magnetic poles are changing place. Yes, the poles are reversing, but science doesn’t support his climate change theory! Nor is climate change just a normal geological cycle: it’s happening much faster than usual.

Reasons morph into excuses. One excuse that I hear – and this is number eight -- is that the leaders in the climate change mitigation movement are hypocrites, so why should anybody listen to them? Some climate change leaders have huge carbon footprints themselves, which makes the average person rightfully skeptical. They jet all over to promote the cause. Who gave them a free travel pass, knowing as they do that air travel is one of the worst emitters per mile that we have?   Bill Gates, who in his 2021 book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster admits to a horrible carbon footprint, lives in a 7-acre house and also jets around a lot. Yes, he’s investing in advanced nuclear power and meat substitutes. Maybe all of these leaders purchase carbon offsets when they travel.   Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg might be one of the few exceptions to the failure to walk the talk. She traveled across the Atlantic in a sailboat and probably gets around Europe by train. Wouldn’t it be great if all these leaders would publish their own carbon footprints each year and share how they’re shrinking them?

Ninth, we don’t like being lectured at. Greta and other young climate activists have been lecturing the older generation recently about our climate failures, and how it’s all talk and not enough action.  They are right. But are we starting to tune this out? It had shock value at first, but now we want to see Greta and her ilk also offering practical solutions.

Tenth, we don’t really know who’s responsible for the fix. A common theme is that it’s up to the oil companies, the car makers, the utility companies, the federal government to take care of climate change mitigation. But we can’t wait for a deadlocked Congress, and the private sector will only do so much without more sticks and carrots. I don’t believe that waiting for the big actors to actually act excuses the average household from working on getting to zero. But a really crisp and clear handbook on how to achieve this at the household level would be most welcome.

Greta Thunberg called it. In May 2021, the teen climate activist pointed out to the world that the global-scale response to the COVID-19 pandemic —shutting down whole sectors of national economies, social distancing, masking, an unprecedented race to produce effective vaccines—proves that where there’s a will, there’s a way. During the pandemic, we demonstrated that we could effectively tackle a massive challenge. Thunberg rightly believes that the world needs to step up in similar fashion to address climate change. The experts gathered in Glasgow for the 2021 climate change summit need to tackle all ten barriers to effective climate change mitigation.

BECOMING AN URBANIST

OCTOBER 2021

Having spent my early life on a remote British hill farm, at the age of eight I became an urbanist. My college-educated parents realized that their most successful crop from the farming years was five children. Then they realized that high school would involve a two-mile hike to the train station, a ten-mile ride on the train, another walk from train to school, and the reverse in the evening. In winter this travel would all be in the dark. Since high school begins at age 11 for British kids, and my older sister was 10, it triggered a big re-thinking of their “back to the land” life plan.

We gave up the farm and moved to York, a city of 93,000 people. At first, I walked to the elementary school, about half a mile away. It was close enough that we could come home for lunch. I had a kick-scooter for longer errands such as fetching our daily newspaper. High school was completely the opposite side of this Victorian-walled city, and while Mum gave us bus money, if we walked, we could keep it. So, my older sister and I learned the fastest walking route to and fro, and most of the time that was how we commuted to school. It took us through ancient streets, including a very short street with a very long name, WhipMaWhopMaGate, through York’s famous Shambles, past the stately York Minster, through two of the walled city “bars” or entry-gates, past the River Ouse, past the main public library, past butcher shops, cafés and hair salons –a scenic trip every day through some of the loveliest and most varied sights of the city.

Walking on the York walls was another delight. The walls brought us to the Quaker Meeting House, to the Kirk Museum where my father worked; to the main shopping areas and the weekly farmers’ market. In the spring the grassy wall foundations were alive with waving daffodils.

Had we stayed on the farm, I don’t suppose I’d have gone after graduate degree in urban planning, which I ultimately did at Glasgow University.

Urban strategic planning in tiny Britain (not much bigger than Rhode Island but with ~70 million people) is generally called Town and Country Planning, with a lot of emphasis on keeping town and country as separate as possible through green belts and other strong land use controls. It’s changed in the 50 years since I lived there, but not as much as one might expect, with suburban sprawl being kept to a minimum despite growing car ownership.

This was my foundation, upon finding myself an urban and transportation planner in the US. Inevitably my thinking was shaped by living in a beautiful, compactly-designed system where government strategic urban planning was expected, and the pleasures of urban life taken for granted.

WHY WOULD ANYBODY CHOOSE TO LIVE IN A GREEN CITY?

We are a nation of pioneers and movers. The American west has been settled for less than 150 years. Innovation, exploration of the unknown, and change have marked our culture from the very beginning. So, a city born of innovation will have appeal to many people.

High quality family wage jobs with good benefits and civic-minded employers will be a big draw. Most standard households won’t move to a new place unless one of them has a job, and the other has prospects. Green city companies may want to consider an “and spouse/ partner” hiring approach. That’s to say, person 1 of the couple gets a job and person 2 is invited to informational interviews, introduced to hiring managers both there and at other green city firms, offered temporary or part-time work for the household’s transition into town. In short, becoming a two-income household (again) is made relatively painless.

Once the employment-and-paycheck issue has been tackled, the biggest draw for most residents will be that living in a green city means: I can live very lightly on the planet without really having to think about it much. I’ll know that I and my household and my new friends are all helping to mitigate climate change by walking our talk every day.

And actually walking —being a pedestrian in my new home, will be easy because of the compact layout and the many pedestrian trails (with fast and slow lanes!) My kids, when I have some, will be able to get to after-school sports and other programs under their own steam on the trails, using bikes, skateboards and shoe-leather.  And for longer trips the driverless electric buses take us all where we need to go, some on fixed routes and some on-demand with door-to-door service.

I may need to own a car, and if so it will be electric, but instead of fretting about where to get it charged, I’ll know that my new city has charging stations as part of every parking stall and meter, and I’ll know that clean energy powers them, because the place is making its own electricity, all from renewables.

I’ll appreciate that compost, garbage and recyclables are all going back into the system to be re-purposed into city park fertilizer, waste-to-energy electricity, and new products, due to the city’s commitment to 100% waste management. Even my human sewage is going to become bio-solids or composting toilet waste that will be used as fertilizer in the city’s neighborhood hydroponics and its surrounding ring of fields.

I will enjoy the support, encouragement and space for gardening to produce both beauty and my own veggies. Whether all I can afford is a balcony with hanging planter boxes; whether I have a rooftop planter, a community P-patch space, or simply a kitchen that’s well set up for sprouting my own salad greens, I’ll enjoy both the process of growing things, and the freshness of my food. And I’ll appreciate that commercially-grown food is being produced right here in the city, in hydroponics towers and in country fields. That food is much fresher too. Almost zero food-miles. Our farmers’ markets will sell not only local food but also local craft products, and be a great place for an outing.

We will enjoy living in a learning culture, where the community technical institute puts on classes for adults and our school-kids including what’s happening around the world in green building, what innovations they’re going to suggest the city council tries. “The tech” will help to create a multi-cultural community, because people of all backgrounds will be coming here to do research, teach or visit. I like the strong connections among our tech institute and our school system, our senior center, and our employers.

It costs a bit more to live in a green city, and optionally if I can afford it, I can become an investor helping to buy down the initial costs of building this place. But if I can’t, that’s OK. And although the cost of a home is on the high side for me, there’s plenty of affordable housing being built throughout the place for those with lower incomes, for retirees and young people just starting out. And all of us have much lower utility bills because our homes are super-insulated and don’t take much to heat and cool; our appliances are all high efficiency, and in any case, all our power supply is renewable energy. And we save money too by purchasing things at the community consignment/thrift stores – for example, how many years do we need a high chair? When junior just needs a booster seat, the high chair is consigned and goes to a household with a smaller kid.

Last but not least is the participatory nature of the green city governance. Residents can serve on the council, or on a committee or commission. Anybody can speak up at a city council meeting and be sure their concern will be noted and addressed. A paid “volunteer coordinator” helps keeps clubs and associations on point, and helps create new ones as needed. And we know what’s going on, through the citywide newsletter and listserv.

Calicadia, Here I Come?

In its February 10, 2017 issue, The Week reports that a group Yes California Independence  is gathering signatures to allow California to petition to secede from the Union. For this to happen, we don’t need another civil war, but there is a high bar to jump over. Two thirds of both houses of Congress and three fourths of the states would have to approve.

A year ago this would have seemed like just another example of California craziness, but under a Trump presidency, it seems that the most unlikely things can happen, so why not dream a little? California is often a bellwether state. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently offered to swap jobs with Mr. Trump, and while that can’t happen under our Constitution (like me, he is foreign-born and doesn’t qualify) but perhaps there’s a leadership role for Schwarzenegger in this new nation.

Perhaps there’s a role for Washington and Oregon too – at least the western parts – so I have tentatively named it Calicadia, combining California and Cascadia into one.  Let’s take a serious look at the opportunities and challenges. What would the ideal Calicadia look like?

The whole thing once approved would start with a Constitutional Convention that would hammer out the basic ground rules. Here are a few ways to go.

First, let’s be a neutral nation like Switzerland. We will need a State / Immigration department (to set up passport and immigration programs & diplomatic relations with our neighbor to the east, the (T)rump United States, as well as with other nations. The existing U.S. military can still have its many bases in Calicadia, but we’ll charge rent. We won’t try to police the rest of the world or impose our views on them – whether upholding dictators or trying to create an American- style consumer democracy.  Calicadians first!

Second, let’s look to the systems of government in other western democracies for best practices that have evolved since the United States Constitution. For example, let’s do transitions of government more like the British do. It is crazy that in the U.S. we have an election in early November and inauguration of the new leader almost 3 months later.  I think this is due to the founding fathers having to get to the nation’s capital by canoe and horseback. Time to update!

I’ve heard that the outgoing British Prime Minister and his or her goods and chattels are moving out the back door of Ten Downing Street right after Election Day while the new PM’s stuff is being moved in the front door.  More importantly, the new Cabinet is in place immediately. Every member of the “Shadow Cabinet” (the opposition party’s leaders) is elected as a Member of Parliament in his or her own right. So they have already been vetted by the voters.  Then every Shadow Cabinet member has a portfolio (housing, transportation, education etc).  Those Shadow Ministers are very well briefed by the permanent civil service in their agency, led by the Permanent Undersecretary for that ministry, who is a highly respected career civil servant (but knows that he or she will always be #2, under the elected Cabinet Minister). When there’s a change in government, the Shadow Cabinet overnight becomes the real Cabinet, ready for business. Quick physical transition, with everyone up to speed on their issues.

Let’s have universal health care like other western democracies – as a basic human right.

Let’s be open to renegotiating treaties with our tribal sovereign nations, which are many and still face many inequities.

We’ll have a department of economics and trade that will establish tariffs for our products - wine, airplanes, movies, medical devices, software and much more. This department will also be empowered with creating and implementing a Calicadia regional economic policy that distributes jobs and prosperity to all parts of the new nation. This will be done through incentives and the like, similar to what was achieved in Italy, Scandinavia and the UK in past decades. This department will monitor and plan ahead to address technological and environmental changes that will trigger the need for new economic policies and programs.

We’ll have our own science-based department of environment and climate change.  All three states in Calicadia are coastal and have vital farmlands, forests and vineyards that will need to adjust to climate change and sea level rise.

Another idea from the parliamentary system – let’s have Question Time, in which the Executive, all the way up to the Prime Minister, is quizzed in front of the Legislative (House of Parliament) about how key issues are being handled. It might help our leaders think better on their feet and maybe even improve their sense of humor, as well as the main goal of keeping them accountable.