Alex Steffen | The Global Warming Statistics

The ozone layer is no longer disappearing and could be back to full strength by the middle of this century, UN scientists have confirmed.

The phasing out of nearly 100 substances once used in products like refrigerators and aerosols has stopped the ozone layer being depleted further, although it is not yet increasing, according to a new United Nations report released last week.

Nearly all life of the planet benefits from this. People benefit especially (millions of cases of skin cancer averted, crops and livestock protected, etc.). This is an unmitigated success for the Earth.

And it’s worth remembering that, when the Montreal Protocol (the international agreement that phased out ozone-depleting chemicals) was being debated, conservative extremists and industry spokespeople in the U.S. and U.K. said first that there was no need for it, then that it could never work with so many nations involved, and finally that it would destroy the economy if ratified. You might note that these are the same arguments made against climate action in these nations.

The Montreal Protocol shows that international action can in fact work, and that it works very well indeed when the largest economies commit themselves most boldly. Large design, engineering and ecological challenges need to be met to meet the climate crisis, yes, but the biggest barriers to climate action all involve the political opposition of vested interests.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Movement Building and Activism at 10:52 AM)

A few items of interest:

We’ll be writing more about the recent spate of books and reports on product-service systems and sharing models soon, but for right now, this image from our friends at GOOD is a pretty interesting take on the evolution of some aspects of the post-ownership trend:

“Sharing is Contagious” graphic; cropped to show only the “Product Service System” column (full graphic via GOOD)

Throughout the Global North, but especially in North America, cars are losing their luster as fetish consumer objects for the younger generations. Simply put, though many people still understand the utility of cars as personal transportation machines in spread-out landscapes, people no longer see cars as particularly important definitions of who they are: “car culture” as it was defined in the 1950s is in steep decline. Increasingly, younger urbanites aren’t even getting driver’s licenses.

(image via Advertising Age)

What’s more, young people in particular own fewer cars than previous generations and are driving a lot less. The most cited reason is concern for the environment — cars are the single greatest cause of climate change, and contribute to a host of other environmental problems — but observers see a convergence of an increasing preference for compact urban neighborhoods and high adoption of technology:

“[A]lmost everything about digital media and technology makes cars less desirable or useful and public transportation a lot more relevant. Texting while driving is dangerous and increasingly illegal, as is watching mobile TV or working on your laptop. All, at least under favorable wireless circumstances, work fine on the train. The internet and mobile devices also have made telecommuting increasingly common, displacing both cars and public transit.”

Meanwhile, the hippest things around are all about transforming urban spaces for livability. Urban gardening is huge in both Europe and the U.S., of course (though arguably less important for restoring local food resilience than protecting a city’s food shed through farmland preservation and direct support of local farmers — but that’s a story for another time). Biking is becoming mainstream in some North American cities (with a surge in political activism by bikers as they realize how completely hostile to bicyclists transportation planning culture is, especially in the U.S.). And the creation of temporary public spaces in parking lots, dead malls and back alleys are hot urban planning innovations.

(image via Metropolis Magazine)

Not that it’s easy. Metropolis has an interesting short interview with Andres Power, who plans temporary parks for San Francisco:

Andres Power: I’m technically an urban designer in San Francisco’s Planning Department. So I work on large capital improvement projects like sidewalk widening, bulb-outs, street replantings. A capital improvement project can take ten years from the moment that it’s funded to when it’s built, but a temporary park can go from an idea to a grand opening in three months.

The Pavement to Parks plaza program was inspired by the work of Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation. Since she was appointed by Bloomberg, she’s really pushed the relationship between New York and its streets. We were blown back by what she was doing, using this temporary process to create public space.

Of course, San Francisco’s mayor doesn’t have the same power that the mayor of New York does.

AP This makes a big difference. Cities like New York have a strong hierarchical structure. We don’t have that in San Francisco. And so when there are differences in opinion between groups or agencies, it can be almost impossible to get things done. The first plaza that went in, at 17th and Castro, had a history going back almost ten years of the community talking about using that space. But making it temporary made it happen. Then, the parklets were inspired by PARK(ing) Day .

Which is indigenous to San Francisco.

AP Right. That was started by Rebar . By the way, New York just put in its first parklet, inspired by us. So it’s coming full circle. And lots of other cities: Portland, Seattle, DC, LA….they’re interested in putting in parklets.

Our plaza program is not exactly like New York’s. Their Department of Transportation designs their plazas in-house, with their engineers and landscape designers. Which has its advantages. Their plazas are incredibly replicable, efficient, and easy. But in having different local designers work on ours, we have something more organic and site-specific. And there’s more room for whimsical projects.

Does the City of San Francisco not have its own designers?

AP DPW does have the in-house talent. But we like working with local professionals and having this partnership between the city, and local designers, and local manufacturers. One reason why the program is so incredibly inexpensive is that the designers are doing it pro bono. And a lot of the materials have been donated, or sold to us at cost.

There’s talk of simplifying the permit process for these temporary plazas. How is that going to happen?

AP The plazas will always likely require some input from the various city agencies, including DPW and the municipal transportation agency. But we’re working with these same agencies on developing a permit system that will allow anyone willing to hold a permit for a space – a business, a nonprofit, a group of people – to apply to put in a parklet.

This last point touches on something I’ve been hearing a lot about from multiple quarters recently, which is the degree to which urban bureaucracies throughout the developed world are having a hard time gearing up innovation at the speed which circumstances demand it. As we’ve discussed before, innovation and experimentation are key to the kind of rapid progress we’ll need to see in cities if they’re going to respond to the scope, scale and speed of the present planetary crisis, but out-dated rule systems and NIMBY politics have in many cities ground truly new thinking almost to a halt. That needs to change.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Urban Design and Planning at 11:30 AM)

The Global Warming Statistics

The analysis and interpretation of increase in average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and the oceans since mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation— Wikipedia

Author Archives: Alex Steffen

“If you don’t have scale, you have a hobby.”

TEDxChange, Hans Rosling and the Millennium Development Goals

Ozone layer stable, on the way to recovery

Product-Services, Urban Innovation and the Death of Car Culture

Copenhagen – Malmö Loop City