Tag Archives: sustainable development

Where’s the action on climate change in the U.S.?

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My reply to another comment on the post No Kyoto Protocol for the United States:

Most Americans are very concerned about climate change. It is a smaller percentage who are not. Even the United States is threatened by coastal inundation but the threats are largely ignored by the press and therefore not communicated to its citizens. Third Planet is making some progress on public awareness but we are a small organization and it is not enough.

For example my local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, did publish the following letter I wrote them in November:

Protect the buffers

Although “Rising seas could soak taxpayers, study says” is a news story that no one wants to read, it is a subject we might ignore at our peril.

The prudent approach for government in their planning scenarios is to take a much harder look at the 100-year floodplain, existing wetlands and low-lying agricultural lands, and consider these as ground zero upon which all future development must be based.

Ultimately the reinsurance industry will have a much louder voice about which developments can be insured. It just plain makes sense to give tidal wetlands, and the valuable services they provide to humans, the room to retreat with the possible onset of rising sea levels.

In Louisiana, for example, coastal wetlands and the buffer they provide against hurricanes are being eroded at a rate of 1 acre every 30 to 40 minutes.

It is time we started applying the precautionary principle to the expensive development decisions we are making, particularly in light of the Reality Check development exercises that have been underway in Northeast Florida for the past six months. (Florida Times-Union letter)

We don’t know if our concerns will be considered by our local planning community in their development decisions, or not. We only know that while Florida is threatened it is not our survival that is at stake—for the time-being.

We can only hope that we all come to our senses on the global implications of climate change before it is far too late.

Inventing the future

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March 26, 2008

We have entered an era where adaptation to global climate change and sustainable solutions for our energy future will be challenging to implement. It’s complicated: the facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent.

The conventional concern is to protect our economic health, our way of life, but it’s also the era where we must move toward a reality of sustainable development. Without a sea-change to sustainable development our way of life will not survive and, today, as a result of these challenges we find ourselves inventing the future.

No-one has ever gone where we need to go but people are innovative, they have ideas. Third Planet has ideas, technical skills, and implementation experience.

The eminent American scholar Ian Barbour maintains there are four promising sources of social change that “contribute to a more just, participatory, and sustainable world”: education, political action, crisis as catalyst, and a vision of alternatives.

Nowhere is ‘crisis as catalyst’ a more obvious source for social change than in the twin crises of global climate change and energy security in a carbon–constrained world. ‘Political action’ is evolving as a source for change in response to these dual threats. Where significantly more work is needed is in ‘education’ and ‘a vision of alternatives’.

To Third Planet, a pragmatic ‘vision of alternatives’ in concert with smart cross-sector ‘education’ is key to accelerating the social change process on these issues—and acceleration is a much-needed outcome at this time.

Third Planet moves to St. Augustine

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October 2006

This summer Third Planet left South Florida to take up our global climate change advocacy work on Florida’s First Coast. The direct impact of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons on our lives was too much. The straw that broke the camel’s back. Not that we’re out of harm’s way, but my family feels safer. We’re out of the peninsula.

For many years I spoke to Southeast Florida and Bahamian audiences, organized workshops, worked in local and state policy circles, and generally got myself involved in “all things global climate change and energy”. Energy engineering, as people who know me will tell you, is my forté.

In the 1970s, when I was a power systems planning engineer, I first learned about the exponential growth of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels. My life as a fossil fuel power engineer changed. I became increasingly involved in building more efficient power systems, and fugitive gas/waste gas cogeneration became my area of specialization. As the years went by and evidence built for me that these so-called greenhouse gases were having a discernable effect on our atmosphere, I became more involved in advocacy. Continue reading →