The Guardian - Benjamin Barber
It can’t be left to dysfunctional nation states to tackle – but as Oslo
and Seoul have shown, metropolitan centres can rise to the challenge of
global warming
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| Illustration by Jasper Rietman
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Climate change
is the most urgent challenge facing humankind. Other issues make
headlines: terrorism kills; inequality affects everyday life for
billions around the globe. But climate is paramount, because in
sustainability human survival itself is at stake. Why then have the
nations governing the planet been so hopelessly ineffective in
addressing the grave environmental crisis?
Is it because the consequences of carbon emissions seem hypothetical,
or too far off? Politicians pay few costs for doing nothing, and
receive little credit for acting aggressively. In the US, a nation that
contributes
one-fifth of all global greenhouse emissions (China is responsible for another fifth), Donald Trump has promised to
reopen coal mines and
free up oil drilling.
The problem isn’t the science. The merchants of doubt who claim there
is a climate science that is open to scientific debate are not
scientific adversaries at all. They are political adversaries, mostly
bought and paid for. It is in the realm of politics that the struggle for sustainability must be fought and won.
Politics is hardly at its best right now, and that is perhaps the
greatest challenge facing us. The weakness of politics undermines
democracy – the faith behind politics. But democracy is crucial because
climate change is also about justice: how to distribute the costs of
decarbonisation and the transition to renewable energy fairly among rich
and poor, developed and developing, large and small, north and south.
This politics can’t be found in increasingly dysfunctional nation
states. The good news about the attempt to address climate change
through government action is that it’s happening. The bad news is that
it’s happening far too slowly. For every new hydroelectric plant built
in the global north, some enormous lake dries up in the global south –
Poopó, Bolivia’s second largest, has
literally vanished over the last few years.
The US state of
California is a leader in green public policies, but farmers there also grow pecans in semi-desert conditions where
each nut harvested uses up to 300 gallons of water.
For every urban fracking ban enacted, there is a move to block it in
the courts. Coal is shut down, but fracked natural gas is accepted as a
“transition” fuel – however
pernicious its effect on decarbonisation.
The best-case scenario for what is likely to be done through
nation-based environmental programmes hardly dents the worst-case
scenario for the catastrophic consequences of all that is not being
done.
However, there is an ample menu of sustainable options available to
cities wishing to address climate change aggressively – and they can
amplify their impact by coordinating their policies. The list includes
divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to
encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon
taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies;
regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve
public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.
Oslo has been in the forefront of sustainable urban
development. With Norway’s energy needs almost completely met by
hydroelectric power, and its lion’s share of North Sea oil and gas going
almost entirely to exports, almost all of the income goes to
Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund. Oslo has thus had the luxury of pursuing a
zero-emission campaign, and appears likely to achieve that goal by 2025.
The city is applying the goal with particular efficiency to
transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations are plentiful.
The plan is to make Oslo the most electric vehicle-friendly city in the
world –
one in four new cars sold in Norway are electric – and a champion of green housing and architecture: its
new opera house is set in a neighbourhood that gleams with green infrastructure.
Asia also has exemplary green-leaning cities, including Hong Kong
and Seoul. The greater Seoul region has a population of almost 25
million, and
in 2015
it was ranked the continent’s most sustainable city. Seoul has made a
massive investment in electric-powered buses. It already has the world’s
third largest subway system, but its carbon fuel bus fleet of 120,000
vehicles has been a massive source of pollution. Current plans are to
convert half this fleet to electric by 2020, which would be the world’s
most ambitious achievement of this kind.
Such approaches can be undertaken to great effect one city at a time,
but they are also mutually reinforcing: networks of collaborating
cities can amplify their global impact. They can also make it more
difficult for courts or governments to oppose environmental initiatives,
standing firm on common approaches to sustainability and
decarbonisation
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| Medellín’s public cable-car system. Photograph: imagebroker/Rex/Shutterstock
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The challenge facing cities and citizens is to summon the necessary
political will to do the things we know how to do – but have not done –
and then to do them democratically. That will not be easy because
democracy is in trouble, because
moneyed interests and global oligarchies are corrupting government.
But the fate of the campaign against climate change and other
existential threats depends on democratic politics within and among
cities.
Cities are the coolest political institutions on Earth. The odds are
two to one or better that you live in a town or city, and not just for
economic reasons. Spend a few days in Singapore or Cape Town or
Nashville. Witness
Oslo’s Tesla taxicabs, or
Seoul’s rehabilitated centre-city river or
Medellín’s public cable-car system.
Keen to confront global warming, but not yet fully empowered to do so,
cities must not only accept their responsibility for assuring a
sustainable world but assert their right to do so.
There are two formidable obstacles blocking a larger role for cities:
a paucity of resources and the absence of autonomy and jurisdiction.
The European Union favours regions over cities, and works more on
agricultural subsidies than affordable urban housing. In the United
States, the structure of congressional representation means a suburban
and rural minority rules over the urban majority.
f cities are to get the power they need, they will have to demand the right of self-governance – as I argued in my book
If Mayors Ruled the World. The Global Parliament of Mayors, an
international grouping of city mayors and the “global city rights movement”, held its inaugural session in The Hague last year.
Because urban citizens are the planet’s majority, their natural
rights are endowed with democratic urgency. They carry the noble name of
“citizen”, associated with the word “city”. But the aim is not to set
urban against rural: it is to restore a more judicious balance between
them. Today it is cities that look forward, speaking to global common
goods, while fearful nations look back.
The world is getting too hot. Science makes it clear that
sustainability is both necessary and possible. Politics shows it is
achievable. Cities are poised to make it happen.
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