Insoluble Problems, Soluble Opportunities

In one episode of Yes, Prime Minister, the British political satire, the Prime Minister tells his cabinet that "every problem is also an opportunity." His Cabinet Secretary, a high-ranking civil servant, then observes that the cabinet must beware of creating "insoluble opportunities."

It is a wonderful exchange, and it tells us a lot about ourselves and the debate over climate change. Mainstream commentators no longer doubt the reality of climate change, but they see only problems in trying to cope with it. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions, it is argued, would do enormous economic damage, especially cutbacks at the levels recommended by scientists and the United Nations in its latest report. It is fraught with problems, so we cannot do it—or at least not at the recommended levels.

But, as the Prime Minister observed, every problem is an opportunity. Not every problem has a solution, but every problem gives us a chance to think anew about how we work, play, travel, and live our lives. And we may never cut back our emissions as much as we would like, but the effort to do so—to rethink our approaches—can lead us toward a better world even if we are not entirely successful.

Consider the problem of buildings. Buildings are one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. They are also one of the areas where change means opportunity, not privation. Retrofitting old buildings for more sustainability; designing new ones with smaller carbon footprints; even simple actions like installing insulation in old houses—all of these measures involve investment, money, and jobs. They are not insoluble problems, but soluble opportunities.

The central problem with buildings is not the technology. Architects already know how to build more sustainable buildings and refit old ones, and over time they will find better ways to do so. The central problem is with ourselves, and the saga of the Comcast Tower in Philadelphia is a good example.

The Comcast Tower was designed to be the world's tallest green building. Among its features was exclusive use of waterless urinals, a new technology that is known to save tens of thousands of gallons of water over time. The Philadelphia Plumber's Union, which has a great deal of political clout, objected. The objections delayed construction on the building and threatened to undercut its green certification. The problem, according to the plumbers, was that waterless urinals would result in less work for members of the union. They were a problem—not an opportunity.

The plumbers were trapped in old thinking. It is perfectly true that installing waterless urinals takes less time (and is therefore less lucrative) than installing conventional ones. But waterless technology is the future; conventional plumbing is the past. The Plumber's Union failed to see the opportunity to master a new technology which, in the long run, would preserve its members' jobs as new buildings adopted the new urinals and older ones converted to them. If Plumber's Union members would not install the technology of the future, someone else would. Failure to adapt, as in most situations, would mean failure to thrive.

A more sustainable society need not be a society in economic collapse. It could be a better place to live than our current world. But we will not see this, let alone achieve it, if, like the Plumber's Union, we fail to see that every problem is also an opportunity.

Eating for the Planet

In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet argued that modern agribusiness practices and the Western meat-centered diet were wasteful and impractical in a world with a growing population. Lappe has since modified some of her dietary theories and begun to emphasize inequities in the food distribution system as a major cause of hunger. But one central assumption of the book still stands—more firmly now than in 1971: Our methods of food production and distribution and our diet preferences have major effects on the environment.

Thirty-five years later, the questions are different. Hunger remains an issue, but we now know that our food production and distribution are major contributors to the increase in greenhouse gases. Livestock—chiefly beef and dairy cattle, but other livestock as well—account for around 18% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to the Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative (LEAD). This figure includes the effects of deforestation to raise livestock, transportation, production of feed, and gas created by the animals themselves.

LEAD suggests that better farming methods and better animal feeds could mitigate many of the problems created by livestock. But greenhouse gases from livestock are only part of a larger problem in the developed world: the production and distribution of food itself. In the United States, much of our produce comes from California and Florida, usually by truck, at enormous cost to the environment. Much of it is nourished by artificial fertilizers, produced and transported at enormous cost to the environment.

Some of this would be hard to avoid even in an ideal world. Staple grains will not grow everywhere, for example, and need to be transported somehow from the places where they will grow to the places where they will be eaten. But, even in the era of sprawl, the United States still has a lot of good farmland where livestock could be raised more humanely and less destructively than at present—and where both livestock and produce could be farmed nearer to where consumers live.

Raising livestock and produce more naturally and locally would not only benefit the environment. It would have health and taste benefits as well. Naturally-produced hamburger, for example, is more expensive than the standard McDonald's variety. But it is less likely to give you e coli infection or mad cow disease, and it tastes better than the bland stuff that passes for beef in fast food restaurants. Local produce almost always tastes better than produce from across the country because it is fresher. And it is likely to be more nutritious, again because it is fresher.

It is easy to see that if we ate less meat and more vegetables—as the U.S. government itself has recommended—we and the environment would be healthier. What is not so obvious is that we would also be eating more enjoyably and more traditionally. The great cuisines of the world—French, Chinese, Italian, and hundreds of others—have never centered around 16-ounce servings of beefsteak. They are not vegetarian, but by using fresh ingredients and cooking them with care, they can produce delicious and healthful meals using far less meat than is standard on American tables. Huge servings of meat are not even traditional in the U.S. Many of our classic dishes, like Boston baked beans, were designed to stretch meat when it was a rare and expensive commodity. Some, like macaroni and cheese, contain no meat at all.

Healthy, delicious, and good for the environment—a combination that is hard to beat when talking about food. Those who look for good ingredients and cook them with respect will never miss McDonald's. They may even wonder why they ate there in the first place.

Ethanol and Absurdity

One doesn't expect creative policy from a Bush Administration that gave us the Iraq War and the military "surge." But the President's energy proposals, made last night in the State of the Union speech, have reached a new creative low. After all the hoopla about initiatives, his actual proposals were simply recycled nostrums that he has proposed before—albeit with minor differences. Last January we were exhorted to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by switching to more economical vehicles and biofuels. This year we are supposed to reduce our gasoline consumption by twenty percent over the next ten years. We will do this by switching to more economical vehicles and biofuels. This time the government will help by making fuel economy requirements a bit more stringent. And it will itself move toward more economical vehicles and biofuels.

Proposals that made little sense last January make even less sense this year. Even on their face they are inadequate. If we merely cut our gasoline consumption by twenty percent over the next ten years, this will not make us energy-independent because there is not enough oil in U.S. territory to supply what we will still be using. Conservation at this level would barely make a dent in our dependence on foreign oil. And a twenty-percent cut in gasoline consumption will do virtually nothing about climate change. For that, the cuts must be far more stringent, and they must include all fossil fuel usage, not just gasoline usage. Mr. Bush's conservation proposal would make us feel as if we were achieving real economies without actually requiring us to do anything meaningful.

Even the ethanol numbers don't add up. The boom in ethanol is good for corn growers and possibly for the American waistline because corn refined into fuel will not be refined into fructose and added to the food supply. But even a mainstream economist like Robert J. Samuelson argues that we just cannot grow enough biological material—corn, switchgrass, wood chips (wood chips?), whatever—to feed our cars.

I emphasize wood chips above because plans to use them reveal the absurdity of plans for a mass switch to ethanol. At the moment, most wood chips used for biofuels are sawmill waste that we would generate anyway and are recycling. But if we switch to ethanol on a large scale, we may find ourselves needing additional sources of wood chips. As we have done with corn, we may be tempted to create wood to use as chips for fuel.

We can't, of course, create wood. Unlike money, wood chips grow on trees. They don't just appear magically out of nowhere. Trees, even those planted for harvest like Christmas trees, take time to grow. Big old trees, the most abundant source for wood chips, take years, sometimes hundreds of years, to grow. How far will be be prepared to go just to keep our cars running? Are we to strip our old-growth forests just so we can continue to drive everywhere? Substitute trees for food crops so we can do our banking from our cars? And how will cutting down trees to fuel our cars help to reduce global warming?

The answer to the last question is simple: It won't. Using trees to fuel our cars can only increase deforestation. That is a step toward, not away from, global warming.

This is not policymaking at all. It is, like the military surge, an attempt to distract us from the real problem, which in this case is our dependence, not on foreign oil, but on the private car. No one ever got elected by telling the people that they should take the bus or the train—or walk. But somebody must begin to do so. Obviously, Mr. Bush is not that person.

Brief Note: Sustainable South Bronx

To rebuild for the future, we have to start somewhere. An individual can change his or her behavior, and that is all to the good. But individuals by themselves can change little without organizing—to pressure policymakers, to stop ill-considered and harmful developments, and most important, to change our institutions in a positive way.

In cities, the best vehicle for organizing is the neighborhood. People in the neighborhood know each other, they share a common interest in the welfare of the community, and if something is wrong with the environment in their area, they can sometimes literally smell it.

That was the case a few years ago in the South Bronx. It is less so now, thanks to one of the most exciting grassroots environmental efforts in the country: Sustainable South Bronx. Founded by Majora Carter, who grew up in South Bronx when it was, quite literally, New York's dumping ground, this organization has helped reverse the decline of the neighborhood and created hope where before there was the smell of rotting industrial waste. It is a group that more than repays study and a model for similar groups everywhere.

Christmas Letter 2006

The curious thing about the future is this: Although it has not yet happened, it affects the present in ways we may not even recognize. We plan for it, and in doing so we make decisions about our families, our work, and what we value most in life. By our choices—even by not choosing, which is itself a choice—we create it for good or ill.

So it is now. We face a future of limits because the world is finite. We face a future of climate change that will also constrain us. Our future will be unlike that of any other generation.

For many of us, this is a frightening prospect. It calls into question all our past values, from economic growth to trips to the local shopping mall. How will we live in the uncertain world that is ahead?

There is no easy or sure answer. The only way for us to move forward is to have faith. Not faith that certain creeds are true. Faith is not a way of proving propositions. It is the act of trusting in ourselves, in others, and in the future, even though we cannot be certain of the outcome.

We can move forward only if we trust that, by doing what we can to create a better future, we will make a difference—even if at this moment we cannot see a clear path ahead. Like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, we must take the Ring, trusting that we will somehow find the way.

Without this kind of trust, we will see no path at all. With it, we can make a beginning. And we can move toward a more hopeful future.

Design for What? Third of Three Parts

A ten-story parking garage at 15th and Chestnut Streets in Center City (downtown) Philadelphia, as proposed by one condominium developer, is quite rightly controversial. Opponents argue that it would add more traffic to an already-congested corner and encourage people to drive to and around Center City, which in turn would generate more greenhouse gases and increase fuel consumption. On the other hand, supporters of the project argue, the city needs more parking to attract visitors from the suburbs who will not take public transit or walk long distances to get to events on the Avenue of the Arts (Broad Street), which is just around the corner from the proposed garage, or to Center City restaurants and other attractions. And the city needs the suburban visitors.

This is not an easy balance to strike. The city does need the visitors. But the city also needs to survive and thrive in an era when travel by private car will become more expensive and difficult than it is today—and when climate change will almost certainly force us to restrict our use of private cars. Market pressures and legal requirements make the situation even more problematic. In the short term, plenty of parking is a marketing plus; in the long term, easy access to public transit may be a selling point. And in the short term, city ordnances require off-street parking for large residential building projects. (The parking garage project began as a condominium project that could not generate funding—hence the inclusion of off-street parking in the original plan.)

Whatever city ordnances and market pressures may dictate, however, lack of parking is not the problem that the "more-parking-is-better" mantra makes it appear to be. A quick search of Center City using Google Maps shows that there are already at least 531 parking facilities in Center City. Some of them, including the parking lot that is currently at 15th and Chestnut, are surface facilities that eat up space and destroy the cityscape. Most are multi-story buildings, some with retail on the ground floor, others with nothing at street level but a blank wall. At 15th and Spruce Streets, just three blocks south of the proposed garage, there is an extraordinary structure half a city block square that consists of a large tavern with ten stories of parking on top—making it possible to drink and drive in one convenient stop.

If parking is not the problem in Center City, what is? The simplest answer is also the truest: jobs. The population of Center City is growing; the economic base is not. And a parking garage at 15th and Chestnut Streets will not reverse this trend. Even with retail stores on the ground floor, it will house fewer jobs than the building that occupied this space before a major fire destroyed it in the 1980s. The good of the city would be better served by commercial development on this site—ideally, retail on the ground floor, with no more than 10-12 stories of offices above it to fit in with the rest of the Chestnut Street corridor. The problem is attracting the jobs.

Philadelphia, it must be said, provides a difficult environment for business because of its eccentric tax structure and bewildering bureaucracy. In the long run, however, merely ending these barriers will do less for the city than a good development plan that balances commercial, residential, and transportation projects to maintain a vibrant, walkable center that people can reach without resorting to their cars.

Philadelphia is not the only city that needs planning like this. In the future that is coming, public transit will become more important. Walkable business districts will become vital. And living closer together in viable neighborhoods will be a necessity. We could choose not to move in these directions: to build more and more parking lots and big-box stores, let our public transit fall to pieces, and ravage our cities in the name of storing millions of private cars. If we do, the odds are against our having a long-term future at all. But we will have plenty of parking.

Design for What? Second of Three Parts

The problem with designing a building is that it is a lasting monument. If it is beautiful, works with its surroundings, and moves us toward a better future, we will enjoy it for a long time, and it will help us to live better. If it is mediocre, ignores or destroys its surroundings, and lessens the prospect of a better future, we may tolerate it, but we will not love it—and in the end, when it has outlived its usefulness, we will have the problem of what to do with it.

All over the United States there are buildings like the big box store in the photo, the shopping mall outside of town that has effectively destroyed the central business district, and the office park that might once have been located in the city center. All are surrounded by acres of parking lots which damage water runoff, speed climate change (both by encouraging more cars and more driving, and by paving over farmland and green areas), and create traffic congestion. But in the suburbs, where most big boxes and office parks are located, parking, however ugly and destructive, has up to now been a sine qua non—an absolute necessity because shoppers and workers must drive their cars to reach the big box that is their destination. They have no alternative.

Older cities like Philadelphia provide alternatives to the private car. Public transit in Philadelphia is inadequately funded, does not run frequently enough, and follows routes that are often based on a city that once was, not the city that exists—but it is there, and it is quite possible to live in the city without a car at all. The difficulty for city planners is that the city needs to attract suburbanites for shopping, events, and jobs if it is to thrive. And suburbanites are not only in the habit of driving everywhere, they actually fear the city (any city, not just Philadelphia) at night. Or at least they fear the process of getting to and from downtown, or find it inconvenient,

In fact, it is inconvenient to drive from the suburbs to downtown, not because of parking but because of traffic. The local news in every city in the United States, not just Philadelphia, has regular reports on traffic jams—a daily crisis that everyone regards as normal even though it plainly is not. Hearing these reports, I regularly wonder why people subject themselves to the torture of driving to the city. The train is leisurely, comfortable, and quiet. It seems expensive, but compared with driving it is not. But there are few trains, they run at awkward times, and they stop running too early. Hence the choice of the slow, unpleasant, noisy, expensive drive to town.

Which brings us back to the proposed parking garage at one of the busiest intersections in downtown Philadelphia. From an environmental and social point of view, a ten-story parking garage like the one proposed is hard to justify. Less diplomatically, it is a disaster. It uses precious city space that could house offices or residents to house cars. It encourages driving to the city, and its location will inevitably increase traffic congestion.

That is the case against the proposal. The case for it is that the city "needs more parking" if it is to attract business from the suburbs. The real question, however, is whether, in the long run, the city will need more parking or better and more efficient access to its events and services. More and more parking seems important for the next five or ten years. But during those years, the price of fuel will go up, the supply will almost certainly go down, and the need to discourage driving (because of climate change) will become even more apparent than it is now. In the long run, the suburbs themselves will have to change or face ruin as the sheer cost of living in them and supplying them grows beyond what those who live there can sustain.

Given a long term in which suburbs become less viable (unless they also change), should city planners approve parking whose importance will probably diminish after five or ten years? And in any case, is a parking garage on one of the most important parcels of city land a good choice? More on this in the third posting of this series.