Urban Black Holes

 A black hole is an area of spacetime where an immense mass generating extreme gravitational forces prevents anything, including light, from escaping. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return for anything that crosses this horizon. This kind of structure is a good analogy for what I've defined as black holes in the ecological system of our planet.

A comparison of the properties of the natural environment versus the built environment is simple. For example, a tree requires only the natural energy of its immediate environment versus the immense embodied energy required for a house. Not only that, the tree provides oxygen, creates its own micro ecology and cools its immediate vicinity with shade and the absorption of energy in the infrared wavelength. Sort of a natural solar collector and carbon sink. In this way, life has created its own method of sustaining itself using sunlight and water. Then you look at what human civilization has produced, which are structures which reverse the natural processes and use tremendous amounts of energy during their lifetime plus the embodied energies of its structure and the oil, gas and water used to make and transport its parts, as well as the energy to build it and snuff out the functioning ecosystem that used to be in its place. So these are little hotspots where the energy transfer works in reverse to the natural flow. When one aggregates many of these hotspots over an area, it creates a very destructive black hole. These black holes can be mapped.

So clearly if these black holes are not significantly balanced out with a healthy biosphere, the entire system collapses. This is in addition to the heat of carbon that's emitted by their existence as well as the transportation and shipping networks that support human habitation systems. Climate change is but one facet of the black hole problem. So there is a limit to the built environment that the planet can handle without the destruction of the ecological systems that support life on the planet.

Urban expansion - the black holes - will threaten biodiversity and impact the ability of the natural environment to function. There is a limit to the amount of human habitation that the planet can support, and we've passed that limit. We're now encroaching on the last remnants of the natural environment that provides what little balance is left in the ecosystem.

An explanation of the fiscal drivers that create these massive urban developments is described in an article that outlines how cities grow, particularly in California, but also across the globe. In effect, the financial models force more and more building for the cities to survive on the revenue this produces. This fiscal model is what drives the black holes that are shredding the ecosphere. The model is shifting to the premise that the form of cities must change because sprawl is too expensive, a retreat from the event horizon. Unfortunately for the fiscal model, the proposed solution of creating more dense development feeds right into the expansion of these black holes; it becomes a self-perpetuating cancer. This is not a solution for the long term. And these dense centers are poised to explode even further.

Unless human civilization comes to grips with its destructive proclivities, and reduces its footprint on the planet, there's not much hope for continued sustainable life on the planet. The ecological footprint must be reduced very rapidly by all the countries on the globe, and readjust our priorities as a civilization that allows us to adapt to the limitations of planetary resources and ecology. Therefore, the adoption of a new fiscal measure of productivity is imperative in our global systems.

The Scream

We're watching the impact of global climate change in the northern hemisphere this year, and the consequences of it are frightening. Looking to the future, its impact is going to increase dramatically, leaving the next generation with little to live for. Prof Sir Bob Watson says that any hope of restricting the average temperature rise to 2C is "out the window". He said that the rise could be as high as 5C - with dire consequences for all of us.

As of right now, each country's share of global carbon emissions in 2008 data represents millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that show no sign of abating. This chart and other resources is from the Union of Concerned Scientists. What is keeping us trapped here? Some of it is the dynamics of US and global power structures.

An excerpt from mi2g, an information storage and management company that pioneers global risk management practices and technology applications lays it out:

It should be kept in mind that the Kyoto Accord taught President Clinton, and the rest of the world as well, that no US President has the power to negotiate and approve an agreement that would have the effect of changing US laws and circumscribing the authority of Congress. When Vice President Gore flew to Kyoto to consummate an environmental agreement the initial news throughout the world was that an historic breakthrough in global cooperation had been achieved. Instead, the Congress reacted by advising President Clinton that he should not seek Senate approval.

At the time of Congressional inaction on the Kyoto Accord, much blame was assigned to the reluctance of countries like China and India to participate. Congressional politicians argued that the US could not limit its own economy when other major world polluters were free to continue without restraint. Frankly, this was a convenient excuse for Congressional reluctance to act, but it was not the only reason for inaction. This rejection was not simply a matter of Republican reluctance. The “Blue” Democratic states of the US industrial heartland and Democrats in the states mining coal and producing oil and gas could not accept that accord. An open vote would have become a huge political embarrassment to President Clinton as well as to Vice President Gore. In subsequent years, President George W Bush received the same advice from Senate leaders, so he simply avoided addressing the Kyoto accord in the same way as President Clinton had done, by ignoring it.

And with respect to the top-level corporate systems which brought the global investment banking system to its knees, and which are in control of Congress, we have a report from the IFG:

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) released a special report on Dec. 6, 2011, “Outing the Oligarchy: Billionaires Who Benefit From Today’s Climate Crisis,” which identifies the world’s top 50 individuals whose investments benefit from climate change and whose influence networks block efforts to phase out pollution from fossil fuels.Little information has been publicly available about the identities of the industrialists, investors and ideologues who are most responsible for the decisions over carbon-intensive activities that drive greenhouse gas emissions far past danger levels.IFG’s new report brings this information to light. The task of calculating carbon decision-making footprints is highly complex. However, IFG’s new study is an initial step in what will be a longer-term initiative of analyzing the roles played by the planet’s worst carbon culprits and how they fund sophisticated influence networks over almost all aspects of government policymaking, especially energy.

The online previews are here.

And the dirty little political backstory is here.

Doing the Work

This "work" in climate change action refers to the final step in the six stages of grief, as outlined by Daphne Wysham. It appends the traditional five steps of grief, as originally described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and adapted by Steven Running with a final step in the process which calls for appropriate response to the acceptance of a lethal global problem.

This becomes a call to adapt a different benchmark for health and success on a global scale. Specifically, it is about replacing the outmoded and destructive measure of GDP with a measure that recognizes all risks and impacts of business, environment and public policy. This measure is proposed as GPI, and it is laid out extensively in this article from The Solutions Journal.

The state of Maryland has developed a Genuine Progress Indicator as a model for implementation. It's an accounting change that forces the negative impacts onto the balance sheet, and thus doesn't rely on monetary compensations for carbon emissions, but rather fundamental and behavioral and economic changes. This affects corporate behavior at a basic accounting level, which is the necessary means of changing the destructive nature of human habitation which is currently based upon a false metric.

Global implementation of this metric, preferably within regional groups, would put the world back on a path to ecological salvation. The benchmarks provided by C&C would establish a fair set of guidelines. This needs to be done soon, before the escalation of carbon emissions runs out of control.

Farm Urbanity Awakes

 A trend has taken hold in California and our local communities that brings our culture closer to that of Europe's traditions. Urban farming, taking the form of fruit and vegetable produce as well as bees, chickens and goats, has started to blossom. The idea has gone beyond the P-patch communal urban plot originally out of Seattle, Washington. The "P" stood for "Picardo", after the family who owned Picardo Farm in Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood, part of which became the first P-Patch.

Locally, Los Angeles County has reversed its position on excluding urban farming, mostly because of its outdated rigid zoning ordinances, and is developing guidelines for this practice. The City of Los Angeles is drafting ordinances, as well. Eric Garcetti, a councilmember and gardener, pushed for the amendment to the city's General Plan that allows these urban gardens to flourish.

In San Gabriel, Jennifer Little is now farming on her property:

Little’s business model is so rare in Los Angeles that the coordinator for a study she’s participating in on urban agriculture through the UC Extension Program often tells her that there’s hardly anyone else in the city doing what she does. She wonders if that might mean she’s “crazy, or revolutionary.” “There are lots of great things about being an urban farmer,” she said. “For one, it's really nice to be home together all the time. Also it feels really good to work hard all day in the dirt with the sun beating down on you, and even though we don't make much money, we know we earn every penny.”

Even very small communities are getting into the act. San Marino has started an ordinance to allow raising chickens on property in a very exclusive residential community. The precedent here, however, is embodied in the Huntington Library in San Marino, which goes back to the local agricultural heritage in Southern California. It celebrates its food production in The Ranch, which is part of the estate grounds, and there is still a small section of orange groves around the Huntington mausoleum that was part of the citrus fruit industry that was established all over Southern California in the last century.

Pasadena's contribution to the local garden movement is Arlington Garden, a public garden on leased Cal Trans property. It was the site of the opulent, 17,000-square-foot Durand Mansion built in 1901 and demolished in the early 1960s. After Cal Trans acquired the property, it stood vacant for 40 years. In 2003 Councilmember Steve Madison and former city manager Cynthia Kurtz approached Caltrans about the possibility of leasing the property for city purposes. Madison hosted several community meetings in 2004 during which residents gave input on potential uses ranging from active recreation, such as soccer fields, to passive use, such as a park. The Mediterranean garden eventually arose as the final citizen concept, and is open to the public.

The trend, spurred by public rejection of corporate farming, imported foods and GMO crops, is an example of citizens taking back control of the renewal of their public and urban spaces for the common good. It also provides a future hedge against the looming food shortages of climate change. Forward-looking cities and regions are discussing strategies for adaptation to a hotter and more crowded planet.

Dilemma

Since the development of a proposed contraction and convergence formula in the early 90's, things have changed. In the intervening 20 years, the relatively backward nation of China has moved from the category of a developing country to the second largest GDP on the globe with an economic system that's the biggest expression of crony capitalism in history. China has done this with a monolithic governmental banking system that operates purely in the interests of expanding Gross Domestic Product with export trade, as Japan did in the post WWII economy, except without the structure of the Marshall Plan. What this has done in the globalized economy is create a massive leveraging of Chinese economic influence into a global powerhouse, albeit with internal instability, pollution and toxic emissions that threaten to destroy the local environment.

The extreme ramp-up of energy development using coal to manufacture the world's solar panels and the myriad products of trade using an undervalued yuan to expand exports has moved China into first world status. It has also made up for tremendous amounts of carbon emissions; it has far overshadowed all other countries in its growing emissions and apparently intends to maintain this status quo. Thus, China now shares the obligations of the United States and Europe in the emissions reductions scenario.

China's responsibility for climate change is discussed in a book by Paul Harris. It describes China's contribution to global warming and analyzes its policy responses. Contributors critically examine China's practical and ethical responsibilities to climate change from a variety of perspectives. They explore policies that could mitigate China's environmental impact while promoting its own interests and meeting the international community's expectations. Mr. Harris has also explored this issue at a climate change conference at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, in June of 2009.

The conference paper outlines a new paradigm of sustainable cooperation with other countries around the globe in order to bring emissions under control.The dimensions of Chinese carbon governance will also need to work coherently together across scales if contraction and convergence towards a national cap is to be implemented properly and cohesively, without further exacerbating problems around the distribution of harms and benefits, particularly to poorer regions. China's current methodology of moving resources and people across its vast countryside reflects the old World Bank paradigm of development at all costs: physical, ecological and social. China's Guizhou province will move two million people out of its mountains and barren terrains before 2020, Guizhou Deputy Gov. Chen Yiqin said this month, as Xinhua reported. The province plans to move 100,000 people in 2012, and the plan is key to the Guizhou's supposed work against poverty. But the government is relocating these massive populations of Chinese without consideration of the social, economic and ecological impacts of these strategies, which are considerable yet not "on the books".

Such is the error of creating huge scenarios based upon an outmoded measure like GDP. It fosters destructive behaviors that are justified by accounting machinations. The same bookkeeping tricks that brought the global financial system to its knees. The time has come to create a different set of values that measure the integrity of the processes, the value of its citizens and resources of the land, such that the world can restore its natural properties and avert the worst of the climate change impacts, which have already begun.

It is imperative that China take its place at the table with the largest players and implement its contraction on par with the US and Europe, and abandon its headlong emissions growth fueled by coal sources. It has achieved the global position its government has sought, and along with that comes the responsibilities of protecting the planetary systems and resources that give sustenance to life.

Scenarios

A proposal on the table from the Global Commons Institute provides a strategic way of reducing global carbon emissions in time to prevent runaway climate change: Contraction and Convergence (C&C). C&C was established and has been on the record as a formal well-supported position at the UNFCCC since 1996. A briefing, explanation and chart are here.

Back in the mid-1990s, Aubrey Meyer, in developing the case for C&C, set down a model for analyzing the implications of any proposal aimed at informing policy makers on how best to organize at the UNFCCC to limit the ravaging consequences of climate change. On a clear axis of time-dependency, this covered the key elements:

[a] the rate of accumulation of the carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere;

[b] the various rates at which the emissions contribute to that globally [contraction]; and,  within that,

[c] shares converging internationally on the global per capita average arising under any rate of contraction (with or without a population-based year set for any year chosen within the contraction process).

As you can see from the above chart, the principle is that all countries contract in a coordinated way in order to limit the temperature change that is generated by carbon emissions. In 1996, CGI's goal was to keep the temperature increase below a further 0.5 degrees C in 2060 with zero emissions at that point, so that carbon is limited to 350 ppmv in 2100, the original C&C intervention at COP-2 1996 Geneva. While this principle was supported, that rate wasn't, so the slower rate of 450 ppmv was proposed.This hasn't been adopted, while we quarrel, and temperatures have already risen by about 0.8 degrees C. We've already passed 350 ppmv and are nearly at 400 ppmv in 2012, and are still pouring out carbon. So now we have a global emergency.

In reacting to this situation, James Hansen has inspired a group of activists who are positioned now on climate change with 'extreme urgency'. This is further supported by his recent article in the Washington Post. Last year Dr Hansen, together with 14 other leading experts in various disciplines relevant to global climate change, concluded that 1 degree C since 1900 is the danger limit for avoiding future planetary climate catastrophe. We are at O.8 C today. Previously Dr Hansen has published that in order to avoid planetary climate catastrophe the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has to be held below 350 ppm. Today it is 393 ppm and rapidly rising.

Recently, after being criticized by European leaders after the May climate talks in Bonn, Todd Stern of the US State Department qualified its support for a U.N goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels in 1900, and made it clear that all countries must reduce carbon emissions forthwith, not just first-world countries. This is a key statement, because it throws out the political carbon allocation derived from GDP analytics, and retreats from historical support of C&C (pg. 13, Equity and Survival)

Bill McKibben's recent article in Rolling Stone has since triggered much public debate about how to address the reduction of global carbon. The debate is contentious because of the importation of the GDP measure into the allocation formula in order to amplify the carbon emission reduction in a "polluter pays" scenario, which was part of the Copenhagen and Cancun agreements. As I've discussed before, this is not based upon science, but rather imports political agendas into the contraction allocation formula. Two of the discussed GDP - based scenarios in the chart above are:

[1] the red curve is the McKibben formula for no more than 154 Gt C "Maximum permissible", but using GDP allocations to create negative emissions for the USA by 2025 within the 1Gt C/yr from 2010, arriving at  0 emissions by 2040. Bill claims that 2 degrees C by 2100 is a safe temperature increase, but notes that there's only 154 allowable Gt C left before we exceed planetary limits.

[2] the yellow curve is the GDR curve which is nearly twice that at 267 Gt C., requiring negative emissions entitlements in the US by 2025, created by GDP allocations. In other words, allows overall more carbon but hits the US much harder. It's now preferred by McKibben, and also by Jeffrey Sachs, who at the same time was a co-author of the Hansen Paper from which McKibben drew his 154 Gt C. The original source of this is Hansen's Carbon Budget of 166 Gt C [i.e. reducing @ -6%/yr from 2010].

The third allocation calculation that is very immediate and urgent is one that is a straight emissions reduction per capita, with no GDP "adjustments". It reflects the urgency that is created because we're already committed to an apparent 2° C by 2100 by not having done anything. That much climate change is now considered dangerous, and so an immediate reversal is necessary:

[3] the grey curve is Peter Carter's 2012 emergency energy conversion and food security budget: virtual zero carbon emissions in 10 years with negative carbon to follow. 1Gt C per year from 2010 arriving at  0 emissions by 2020, in order to restore the 350 ppmv level of carbon in the environment at 2050. That's essentially where we are today with our extreme climate events. If you've done the real math, you know that it means massive reductions in carbon emissions, energy use and global stranded investments.

An interactive chart showing many options is here. You will see that under the IPCC scenario we never get back to the planet we used to have in 1950, when global warming had already started at about 310 ppmv.

Humankind's legacy must rapidly shift to a model of sustainable development and re-establishment of the natural processes that we have eroded.  We are near the end of our planet's ability to support our civilization.

The GDP Chimera

A fiscal "measurement" being tossed about these days as a means of allocating global carbon emissions allowances with respect to climate change is unfortunately not an accurate or reliable means of establishing parity in these emission goals. Gross Domestic Product is actually made up of many financial banking ledger tricks, between countries as well as global regions. It is ultimately a political tool. Inasmuch as GDP has been used as part of a "broad brush" look at consumption via the I-PAT formula, that is only an assumed relationship. This is a balance that fluctuates wildly and shifts with the flows of capital between corporations and governments, and is highly subject to interpretation. Further, it is based upon a growth fallacy that is fundamentally unsustainable. GDP is measured in value terms set by the market, not by physical reality, which is what carbon emissions are all about.

As an example of the feedback loops embedded in GDP, let's look at how China is pumping up its GDP in order to create wealth for buying resources from other countries. At the Yangtze River, near the town of Luohuang, another dam is proposed. This section of the river belongs to a nature reserve created to protect hundreds of species of fish, including the Chinese Paddlefish. When built, the Xiaonanhai Dam will destroy the reserve, flooding it, creating an enormous reservoir. At around five billion dollars, the dam is one of Chongqing's largest investment projects. Critics say Bo Xilai championed the project to help the city achieve historic GDP growth numbers, thereby securing himself a spot in China's top leadership, but with seriously destructive actions that negate the environmental commitments.

China is also a huge importer of coal. As a result of this consumption demand, western USA ports are figuring out how to increase their transit supply lines to export coal to China, which is the only big remaining market for coal. This of course simply balloons the whole carbon problem out of control, and is also utterly destructive to the existing local communities that would get mowed under by these giant infrastructure systems tailored to expand oil-fueled transport for their profit. This is the vicious cycle unleashed by the GDP economic model, and it feeds on itself to destruction, very similar to the fiscal banking collapse that we've experienced in the last few years, where none of the risk was priced into the model. This kind of risk exclusion is what the climate deniers are engaging in.

GDP is a disincentive if it's used to allocate carbon quotas because it discourages profitable investment and development of clean energy technologies. Why spend money developing profit if it's counted against a country or region's old industries that have already paid out on their investments? That also discourages pollution controls and regenerative development if it creates an additional obligation to fund technologies and infrastructure in third-world countries, at the cost of NOT reducing the biggest carbon emissions in the major leading countries. Additionally, third world countries should not be burdened with GDP-generated obligations if their profits and industry create a profitable reduction their carbon emissions and per capita energy use. This focuses on the principle of the "common good" as a primary human goal.

The measurement of energy use itself and carbon emissions is the only straightforward way to tackle the factors driving climate change: it can be objectively measured and calculated by the activities that drive the emissions. That ties it to the land itself and becomes a form of land value tax. If these criteria are set across the global economy, then they are simple to track and transparent with satellite and industrial production measurements that are externally verifiable. This creates rewards for restoration of ecology and reduction of consumption. Farmland becomes more viable, and pristine forests and tundras, even arctic areas, become extremely valuable in their natural state. And therefore there is no need to "consume" it.

This creates a level playing field so that the corporations, which are now far wealthier than many countries, have no where to run. It holds all activities accountable and measured against common agreed-to standards. Enforcement is achieved with cooperative global data sharing, with a fair means of rewarding industries that reduce carbon emissions. That means oil, gas, coal and shale extraction are heavily impacted, while farming is protected, renewable power is promoted, and natural resources are highly valued and conserved. That, in turn, makes it possible to reward population reduction and ecological restoration; the inverse of our current accounting system inherited from the old world of superstition and fear.

A comprehensive article on changing the value system from the GDP is here from Orion Magazine.

Update 5/23/15: The Paradox of Wealth  GDP measurements become everything, despite the fact that such measurements are concerned only with economic value added, and not with the entire realm of material existence.

Update 8/21/16:  GDP is a financial construct at its heart, a political and philosophical abstraction (from John Mauldin)