Recently in Food / Agriculture Category

Lucky for me I was able to be in town for Labor Day weekend, and immersed myself in Slow Food Nation as well as San Francisco's Sunday Streets event.

It's so inspiring that wholistic urban sustainability is becoming a reality, and that is making carbon-reduction fun, profitable, innovative and, yes, delicious. 

My family and I took our bikes to the ferry to the sunny city and pedeled around the car-free city streets, with roller skaters, tricyclists, runners, walkers and pogo-stickers.

The Sunday Streets events was the first if its kind for San Francisco. This year Portland, Oregon, and New York City have already done the same, in the mold of Bogota, Columbia's Ciclovia. It was a big hit, stressing physical fitness at different stations along the waterfront with activities for the kids and hula hoops for everyone else. Kudos to Mayor Newsom, the department of parking and traffic that blocked off auto traffic and all the volunteers.  

Our destination was the Victory Garden in front of San Francisco City Hall, the community centerpiece of the Slow Food Nation festival.  Slow Food Nation celebrated local, organic, tasty, fair and humane American food, the largest celebration of its kind, with 60,000 attending the three-day proceedings. 

Besides the gorgeous 1/3-acre victory garden, where children and adults visibily delighted in experiencing a working food plot (200 pounds going to food banks this week alone), we went to a tasting of some of the best food purveyors in the nation Saturday evening.

Some food highlights: a truly white (clear) old vine Fume Blanc from Oregon, Rubicon's 2004 estate red, chocolate from Madgasgar, pickled vegetables, acme bread pizza, wild coffee beans from Eritrea.

I also chatted with many luminaries: Vandana Shiva, who is saving thousands of species of rice from extinction in India; John Knox, co-founder of the Earth Island Institute and Michael Dimock, of the Roots of Change fund, which helped Slow Food organize the event.

Sue Conley co-founder of the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes, CA, told me that higher energy prices have made her legendary cheese business take off even more recently.  

She opined that we are at a watershed moment, when locally produced food starts to lose its "gourmet" connotations and starts to be known as the healthy, high quality way to put our money where our mouths are, which will help local economies while preserving our valuable farm and pastureland from getting paved over forever.

The tropical storm that kicked off the Pacific monsoon season Saturday has now officially killed 22,000 (expect a much larger death toll, perhaps more than 100,000) and left an estimated 1 million homeless.

How much of the event's intensity was caused by global climate change can be debated, but I was struck by the "before" and "after" satellite view of the region.

This is what future climate-change caused sea-level rise projections look like in low-lying regions all over, not just in the Irrawaddy Delta--The Mississippi Delta, Chesapeake Bay, throughout earth.

Look at the difference between the photo on the right, after Cyclone Nargis, and on the left before the cyclone. On the right, hundreds of square miles are now under water as can be seen by the expanded blue at the bottom of the photo.

The frightening part is that this photo is not a projection. It's real, and it's what one million or more people are struggling to survive in at this very moment. Tens of millions more will be impacted by the resulting famine that results from the loss of not only farmers and their rice crops, but the permanently impacted center of the nation's agriculture.

With climate change there will be slow changes to some coastlines and low lying areas.

Climate change may also literally submerge overnight coastlines and river deltas, such as these densely populated areas just outside Burma's largest city, Yangon, which are now more part of the Indian Ocean than mainland Asia.


Photo: AP/Yahoo

Shell released this month two new scenarios about the future of energy and global climate change, and they are quite sobering. To the credit of Shell's scenario team, they did not pull any punches, nor did its executives water down the results.

The global oil giant, based in The Netherlands, has been developing scenarios since the late 1970s as a way of informing its medium to long-term business strategy. Peter Schwartz, who now heads the scenario consultancy Global Business Network, was credited as the main innovator behind scenario planning, which takes a future launch point and asks: "What if?"

Schwartz and Doug Randall were the authors of a prescient 2003 scenario on the potential political, security and economic impacts of global climate change that was commissioned by the US Department of Defense. 

Shell's two new scenarios "Blueprints" and "Scramble" represent two differing visions of the next 50 years. Both project that, "by 2015, growth in the production of easily accessible oil and gas will not match the projected rate of demand growth" and that, "remaining within desirable levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere will become increasingly difficult." 

Each scenario also sets the expectation for the increased growth of coal as an energy source in providing both dirty and carbon sequestered power for electricity generation. 

From this point, the two scenarios diverge.

Scramble offers up a world where nations refuse to agree on climate change mitigation treaties and efforts, instead focusing on getting energy to meet their economic needs without minding future political, environmental, climatic and corresponding economic consequences.

Under Scramble:

• nations will only focus on getting more energy supply rather than curbing demand because "it is too unpopular for politicians to undertake."
• Developing nations get hit with food shortages as a result of first generation (ethanol from corn) biofuel production.
• Coal production doubles by 2025 and dirty fuel sources such as oil sands and shale are heavily tapped, despite the exponential extra greenhouse gas emissions that result. 
• Greenhouse levels subsequently rise to a level on a path to being "well above 550 ppmv" (what some scientists call a climatic "point of no return") and the world hits an economic slowdown by 2020. Only then are major actions taken, but at much greater cost than if they had been taken earlier. 

The more hopeful scenario, Blueprints, presents an emerging network of government, business and NGO coalitions from the local level up to the international level that collectively reduce global energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

This passage from Blueprints was especially relevant:

In the early part of the 21st century, progressive cities across the globe share good practices in efficient infrastructure development, congestion management and integrated heat and power supply. A number of cities invest in green energy as sources for their own needs and energy efficiency...In an increasingly transparent world, high-profile local actors soon influence the national stage...Perceptions begin to shift about the dilemma that continued economic growth contributes to climate change...In addition, successful regions in the developing world stimulate their local economy by attracting investments in clean facilities made possible by the clean development provisions of the international treaties that replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. (p. 27)

I've seen evidence of this emerging approach through our firm Common Current's recent work with nations and the State of California that is based on my book How Green is Your City? In How Green is Your City? I describe how some cities such as Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; New York; Chicago; and Seattle are setting the agenda for the future of our nation in their climate change mitigation policies and practices.

Now other nations are trying to develop policy based on international urban best practices. In Korea last month I met with national and local leaders on plans for developing potential green city metrics and approaches. The trip was sponsored by the US Department of State. Next month I will be meeting with European Union officials from the Environment Agency and the EU agency for Sustainability and Information Technology, ACIDD, in Brussels and Paris, where I will be presenting on U.S. city metrics and approaches.

Shell in its Blueprints scenario credits the EU as the key enabler of future international green energy systems through its CO2 pricing mechanism and carbon emissions trading scheme, which it speculates will be adopted by other countries, including the U.S. and even China. "This trading regime gives a new boost to new industries emerging around clean alternative and renewable fuels."

Blueprints depicts an international network of zero emission vehicles, wind and solar power and electric transport, even in developing nations. It suggests that 60% of global electricity will be generated by non fossil-fuel sources by 2050. Moderated consumption of oil, meanwhile, allows "most nations to reach a plateau of oil production without the (oil) shocks that they would have otherwise experienced."

The scenario concludes:

By 2055, the U.S. and the EU are using an average of 33% less energy per capita than today. Chinese energy use has also peaked....in Blueprints, in a critical mass of countries, people support national leaders who promise not only energy security but also a sustainable future. Initial pain has reduced uncertainty and prepared the way for long-term gain. (p.36)

 

 

 

 

On Friday I followed the fruit blossoms up Old Gravenstein Highway up to Sebastopol, CA (pop 8,000), where The Post Carbon Institute is based.

Present were the Institute's founder and executive director Julian Darley, co-director Celine Darley, along with authors Richard Heinberg (The End of Oil, Peak Everything) and Daniel Lerch (Post Carbon Cities).

We had tea in the local energy farm garden surrounded by a quarter acre of food-sunlight-energy-soil experiments, including an ethanol distiller and apple press. Chickens clucked in their pen and mosquito fish swam in the caputured rainwater reservoir. The garden epitomizes a sort of working lab for how communuities can achive greater self-reliance in the face of global climate change and energy volatility.

We discussed how Common Curernt and the Post Carbon Institute can collaborate on our visions of a more sustainable future. Daniel has been leading up work with North American cities on oil-depletion protocol, while Common Current has worked with regions, the State of California and national governments on creating frameworks for green cities.

Besides the challenge of climate change, government, businesses and citizens need to prepare for scarcer resources, namely crude oil, which has risen more than four times in price the past few years. For the first time, even Goldman Sachs and UBS energy analysts, automotive companies and the McNeil Lehrer show are mentioning the "P" word--peaking oil.

The Post Carbon Institute's energy garden is one response to figure out how a society responds to the diminishing availability of the economy's key resource. More critical has been the institute's development of Relocalization Networks.

The Relocalization Network is composed of more than 170 grassroots groups and affiliate organizations all over the world. Consider Willets (CA) Economic Localization, which includes an inventory of how the Northern California town is preparing for greater energy and food security, to the Grateful Gleaners, wich last year picked four tons of unwanted fruit and distributed it to schools, senior centers and food distribution centers. 

PCI has also started a fleet of carbon-free carsharing in Sebastopol. Julian took me for a spin in two different electric vehicles, one parked in front of the local energy farm, and one in the driveway of a former Sebastopol mayor. All he had to do was wave a fob over a transponder in the dashboard to get access to the cars, which were being partially charged through solar energy panels.

Banish thoughts of isolationist hippie back-to-the-landers--the Post Carbon Instutute is more an internet savvy organization with 20 employees, a book publishing arm and a carefully researched framework for new community networks and municipal mangers to plug into.

PCI and Common Current are planning how we can expand their network statewide and into Marin County, CA, where Common Current is based. We expect to make presentations to the city council of Fairfax and Sustainable Fairfax, and to get involved in county leadership efforts to develop communtiy choice aggregation for community owned renewable energy.  

This is final entry on my Korean cities tour, sponsored by the US Dept. of State and US Embassy in Seoul.

I'm back in the US after five days in Korea, on a hectic, though quite successful visit to cities of Seoul, Changwon and Busan to lecture at universities and meet with Korean officials about the development of green cities.



Seoul Redux

I took a relaxed journey to Seoul on the high-speed Korean National Rail from Busan--I loved the way the conductors ceremoniously bow to the passengers after entering or before leaving each train car, and the Korean folk music that plays before each station announcement. We then went to Seoul National University, where I was to deliver a lecture at the school of Architecture and Urban Design and graduate school of Environmental Studies.

(Seoul National University is the top public educational institute in the nation.)



First we made a courtesy visit to the Dean of  Architecture and Urban Design, Kiho Kim.  Dr. Kim told us he is preparing this summer to open the Asian Sustainability Institute on the campus, the first such institute for all of Asia. I look forward to collaborating with Dr. Kim and other partners on the institute's positioning and planning.

Seoul National University in conjuncton with the city of Seoul is also hatching a plan to make the university campus a living model of a creative and green neighborhood, celebrating the arts, cultural attractions and the latest in sustainable urban planning, design and technology. Think of a green Dinkytown, the off-campus neighborhood near the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where Dr. Kim previously taught, he told us.


After lunch with Dr. Kim and professors Kyung-Jin Zoh and Jong-Sang Sung, I lectured to about 50 professors and students, including one professor that is working with the Korea Land Corporation on the Korea cities indicators project I mentioned in my second-previous blog entry (see "Halftime Report" blog from March 12).

Our final stop was Seoul City Hall to present to and meet officials from the city's "Green Seoul" program. Seoul's sustainability efforts appear to be more siloed than those of leading US cities, with "green" efforts having separate city management from such areas as city public transportation, fleet management and renewable energy.

On the subject of climate change and carbon action planning, however, I was told by Seoul Green deputy director Yoon Jong Choi that Seoul will be sponsoring the C40 Large Cities summit meeting of the world's most populous 40 cities, sponsored by the William J. Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative. I attended the first C40 summit in New York City last spring and hope to be back in Seoul for the next C40 event in 2009.



My final night in Seoul was spent checking out the very cool Myeongdong neighborhood with the US Embassy's Eun Kyong. We had green tea lattes and cheesecake, made from local organic tea grown in the southwest of Korea. Turns out Koreans are also very concerned about pesticide and pollution food contamination from Chinese imports, especially heavily pesticide sprayed tea.

Huge thanks to Choi Eun Kyong, assistant cultural affairs officer Jeffrey Beller, Jean Vander Woude, John Dyson and my interpreter Kim Chi Young for all their excellent planning, cultural guidance and hard work in putting the trip, lectures and meetings together. It's extremely heartening to know that the US Embassy has such high-caliber representation overseas!

I'm sure future developments resulting from this tour will be forthcoming. I'll keep you posted.