Geography of Hope Author Makes Urgent Plea to Fast-Track Sustainability

Posted October 13th, 2010

By Barbara D. Janusz

“. . . Water, water everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink . . .” 

          As our planet’s warming climate tilts towards increased and more intensive precipitation in many corners of the world, the Ancient Mariner’s lament is being echoed by millions of displaced Pakistani flood victims, at risk of contracting waterborne diseases. This lament was also the springboard for Chris Turner – author of the celebrated non-fiction book, The Geography of Hope – in delivering his keynote address at the Western Canada Water Conference, held in Calgary in September.

          Turner underscored that we take water for granted; on a global scale, the challenge of sustainable water management is that while there is not enough of it in some regions, when flooding occurs too much water can have disastrous consequences. Without dwelling on the negative – how we got here – Turner shifted his audience’s attention to visualizing a scenario with two train tracks.

          On one track, a fast-moving train is rapidly approaching a precipice as the conductor makes the dire announcement that our fuel supply is running out. On the other track, another train is veering away from the cliff.

          “The great project of the 21st century . . . is making the leap from one track to the other,” Turner said. The key to making the transition to sustainability – a lifestyle designed for permanence – is to focus on a new bottom line, “. . . to consider the capacity of (our global) ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapse.”

          As an example of sustainability, Turner pointed to the Drake Landing solar community in Okotoks in southern Alberta, which incorporated a seasonal solar thermal energy storage system – the first of its kind in North America.

          Designed to store abundant solar energy underground in the summer months for later distribution in the winter to heat its 52 residences, this innovative network of solar panels is just one of many features which has Drake Landing being lauded as “an exercise in technology expansion.” The development also was constructed of sustainably harvested lumber and utilized recycled drywall, along with upgraded vapour barriers, windows, roofing materials and insulation systems.

          The community of Okotoks itself garnered a reputation for being progressive when, in 1998, it capped its population at 30,000 residents to conform with its water licence, which is tied to the local Sheep River’s limited carrying capacity.

          Turner’s crusade for sustainability, as he acknowledges in the prologue to The Geography of Hope, is rooted in the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. With the objective to “. . . protect the integrity of the global environmental and developmental system,” the declaration’s 27 principles can be summed up by the commitment – to present and future generations – to minimize the environmental footprint on the global landscape, while promoting a higher quality of life for citizens of developing countries.

          In the spirit of the Earth Summit, Turner’s narrative takes the reader on an odyssey around the globe, to both developing and developed countries – India, the United States, Thailand, Denmark and Germany.

          By chronicling the pioneering, sustainable development initiatives of communities and individual entrepreneurs, the author lends credence to the belief that the activist and sometimes confrontational environmental movement is passé. Rather, the dire warning of Sir Nicholas Stern about pending economic collapse has ushered in a new era of sustainability in housing, power and food production, transportation and industrial development.

          As far as developed or industrialized nations are concerned, Turner devotes a good chunk of his book to what he considers the global leader in sustainability – Denmark. Apart from having developed the largest and most extensive wind farm system in the world, Denmark is also proving to be a leader in industrial symbiosis – “. . . the trading of wastes and byproducts between factories engaged in divergent activities.”

          In Kalundborg, Denmark, carbon dioxide emissions and waste reduction is the order of the day, as several industrial facilities have become symbiotically dependent on the Asnæs Power Station and on one another for their operations. The excess steam from the 1,500-megawatt coal-burning generating plant is dispatched to neighbouring Statoil’s oil refinery, providing 15 per cent of the refinery’s “process steam” for heating its pipelines and oil tanks. The steam also supplies the district heating systems of the Novo Norkisk pharmaceutical plant, the Novozymes enzyme production facility and 4,500 households.

          Scrubbers on the power plant’s smokestacks have eliminated sulphur dioxide emissions, while gypsum – the chief byproduct of the generating process – is shipped to BPB Gyproc, a plasterboard factory. The power station’s wastewater is used by an adjacent fish farm and the desulphurization process also yields nitrogen-rich byproducts used as fertilizers and pig feed.

          Statoil’s excess gas from its refining process, which would otherwise be flared off, is shipped to BPB Gyproc and this facility’s cooling water, in turn, is used by the power plant for its boilers.

          From Denmark, Turner shuttles his readers between the solar region of Vauban in Frieberg, Germany – home to 5,000 residents on a redeveloped 42-hectare former site of a French military barracks – and Taos, New Mexico, a hub of earthquake-proof thermal dwellings known as “earthships” that are constructed of concrete and recyclable materials, including tires.

          When I interviewed Turner after his keynote address at the Western Canada Water Conference, we discussed the often unyielding regulatory and legal liability obstacles that tend to thwart sustainable developments in developed countries, particularly the United States.

          In The Geography of Hope, Turner chronicles the saga of Mike Reynolds, the inventor/designer of earthships, who waged a lengthy and losing battle with municipal authorities over his earthships’ non-compliance with the local building code. Notwithstanding the fact that both the design and raison d’etre of earthships are aimed towards self-sufficiency and zero emissions, each dwelling, was required by law to be connected to the grid.

          In contrast, in developing countries such as Thailand, bottom-up sustainable initiatives are less likely to be hamstrung by local or provincial/state licencing requirements and the frequent protracted deliberations over potential liability issues.

          In Huai Kra Thing, a remote mountainous region in Thailand on the border with Burma, a micro-hydroelectric project, funded by the UN Development Program, has transformed the lives of 40 households by providing them with what so many in the developed world take for granted – electricity. What is so remarkable about the project is that the dense vegetation was cleared by hand with machetes, while the machinery required for the dam was erected without cranes or the usual earth-moving equipment.

          The intensity of annual monsoons poses a high risk for the dam being destroyed, but because the villagers had themselves erected the powerhouse, they could also repair it.

          In our highly regulated developed world, a comparable grassroots sustainable energy project is virtually unthinkable. The first hurdle facing a community wanting to construct a micro-hydroelectric plant would be the granting of a water licence, and even if the government approved such an application, the dam’s design would be subjected to further regulatory scrutiny.

          The ingenuity of villagers in the developing world forging ahead with a sustainable micro-hydro project was not, however, on Turner’s agenda in delivering his keynote address on sustainability to waterworks professionals trained to comply with the regulatory regime of water treatment and delivery.

          Following up on his dual train track scenario, Turner presented three crucial adaptations for transitioning from the doomsday train track to the sustainability track. In order for us to turn the corner and avoid the precipice, he advocated that government and industry must commit to what he called the Three Great Leaps of Energy Policy, Urban Design and Transportation Infrastructure.

          The limitless economic growth that for the past 60 years has provided us with an enviable standard of living, and to which we have become accustomed, has been made possible solely through harnessing fossil fuels as an energy source. In November 2008, the International Energy Agency confirmed, through its scrutiny of historic data on oilfields globally, that by 2020, world demand for oil will likely outstrip supply.

          The feed-in tariff system that Germany adopted to accommodate the forward-thinking solar region development in Freiberg is one strategy that can be employed to reduce fossil fuel consumption, Turner noted. Simply put, feed-in tariffs provide payment to generators of renewable energy for each kilowatt of electricity they produce, whether from a solar photovoltaic system, wind turbine, biogas or hydro project.

          Most jurisdictions in North America, with the exception of Ontario, are lagging behind European countries, such as Germany, Spain and France, in adopting renewable feed-in tariff energy policies, although in British Columbia, the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources recently committed to establishing a feed-in-tariff regulatory regime.

          Closely tied to Turner’s first Leap of Energy Policy, he advocated the second and third Leaps towards sustainability – Urban Design and Transportation Infrastructure.

          North America’s heavy dependence on the automobile has precipitated the development of non-resilient suburbs. The New York Times recently reported that many American cities are struggling with debt and are seeking state assistance to stave off bankruptcy. Turner, in his keynote address, focused on Copenhagen as an urban design shining star, famous for its bike lanes and public spaces.

          But he also mentioned Lakewood – a suburb of Denver, Colorado –  where a derelict shopping mall was reconverted into Belmar, a 22-block suburban downtown of commercial, office and residential space, replete with pedestrian-friendly high streets, plazas and curbside parallel parking.   Projected, in its final phase of completion in 2012, to accommodate 1,300 private residences, Belmar’s high-density housing defies the urban sprawl blueprint of suburbia. The development has not only reduced its environmental footprint on the landscape, its design has also incorporated space for art studios, an art centre affiliated with the Denver Art Museum,  and innovative technology, such as low-intensity street lighting to cut minimize light pollution.

          Regarding the third great Leap of Transportation Infrastructure, Turner sang the praises of Spain’s Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) high-speed rail network, which is redefining the sparsely populated Iberian subcontinent.

          Linking Madrid to Seville in the south, and Barcelona to the east on the Mediterranean coast, at speeds of 350 kilometers per hour, the AVE (which means “bird” in Spanish) is not only lowering greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be emitted through air travel, the rail network is also resulting in less road congestion and fostering greater social cohesion and economic mobility.

          The unique virtues of the AVE were extolled in a Wall Street Journal editorial, entitled “Spain’s Bullet Train Changes Nation – & Fast,” published in April 2009. Ciudad Real, a languishing provincial city in the state bearing the same name – which was previously bypassed by the pre-existing railway and highway – became revitalized when the AVE ensconced a commuter station in its downtown core, linking it in 50 minutes to Madrid.

          The same Wall Street Journal article reported that U.S. airlines have vociferously (and effectively) lobbied Washington against high-speed rail projects. In the 1990s, Southwest Airlines successfully trumped the development of a bullet train in Texas.

          Spain, however – along with Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Italy – is currently confronting a rude economic reckoning. Precipitated largely by the September 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the Spanish economic meltdown has jeopardized Madrid’s commitment to connect all provincial cities to the capital in less than four hours.

          The protracted nature of the global recession has, sadly, put some sustainable top-down governmental initiatives on the back burner – but not all. The U.S. military, with a view toward reducing its exposure to terrorist sabotage of fossil fuel convoys from Pakistan into Afghanistan, has begun embracing renewable sources of energy for its troops.

          In an October 4, 2010 New York Times article, “U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels,” writer Elisabeth Rosenthal reports that U.S. NATO forces were recently equipped with solar tent shields providing shade and electricity, solar chargers for computers and communications equipment, energy-saving lights and portable solar panels.

          On a grander scale, the U.S. Air Force has tested a 50-50 mix of biofuel and jet fuel. The U.S. Navy – which pioneered previous energy transitions, from sail power to coal-generated ships in the 19th century, and from coal, to oil, to nuclear power in the 20th century – is now developing hybrid ships.

          As renewable sources of energy begin to supplant fossil fuels as our chief power source, government, industry, and individuals can shift their focus to sustainable management of our planet’s most precious resource – water. Even in oil-rich Alberta, the provincial government recently authorized a task force of hydrologists to study the effects of tar sands  development on the Athabasca River and its tributaries.

          The planet’s dependence upon fossil fuels is like the proverbial albatross that relentlessly hung around the Ancient Mariner’s neck. By embracing a more sustainable way of life, we can end Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner’s lament for water – and sail, unimpeded, into a brighter future.

Barbara D. Janusz has practised law, taught law and management, and is a sustainability management consultant.  She has been a contributor to EnviroLine since 2005.

Comments

fenderbirds
nice article, keep the posts coming
Comment made on October 18th, 2010 at 9:34 am by fenderbirds


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