Seeing a sustainable future Alex Steffen

[Music]

[Applause]

climate change is already a heavy topic

and it’s getting heavier because we’re

understanding that we need to do more

than we are right we’re understanding in

fact that those of us who live in the

developed world need to be really

pushing towards eliminating our

emissions that’s to put it mildly not

what’s on the table now

and it tends to feel a little

overwhelming when we look at what is

there in reality today and the magnitude

of the problem that we face and when we

have overwhelming problems in front of

us we tend to seek simple answers and I

think this is what we’ve done with

climate change we look at where the

emissions are coming from they’re coming

out of our tailpipes and smokestacks and

so forth and we say ok well the problem

is that they’re there they’re coming out

of fossil fuels that were burning so

therefore the answer must be to replace

those fossil fuels with clean sources of

energy and while of course we do need

clean energy I would put to you that

it’s possible that by looking at climate

change as a clean energy generation

problem we’re in fact setting ourselves

up not to solve it and the reason why is

that we live on a planet that is rapidly

urbanizing that shouldn’t be news to any

of us however it’s hard sometimes to

remember the extent of that urbanization

by mid-century we’re gonna have about 8

billion perhaps more people living in

cities or within a day’s travel of one

will be an overwhelmingly urban species

in order to provide the kind of energy

that it would take for 8 billion people

living in cities that are even somewhat

like the cities that those of us in the

global North live in today we would have

to generate an absolutely astonishing

amount of energy it may be possible that

we are not even able to build that much

clean energy right so if we’re seriously

talking about tackling climate change on

an urbanizing planet we need to look

somewhere else for the solution the

solution in fact maybe closer to hand

than we think because all of those

cities were building our opportunities

every city determines to a very large

extent

the amount of energy used by its

inhabitants right we tend to think of

energy use as a behavioral thing I

choose to turn this light switch on but

really enormous amounts of our energy

use are sort of predestined by the kinds

of communities and cities that we live

in I won’t show you very many graphs

today but if I can just focus on this

one for a moment it really tells us a

lot of what we need to know which is

quite simply that if you look for

example at transportation a major

category of climate emissions there is a

direct relationship between how dense a

city is and the amount of climate

emissions that its residents spew out

into the air and the correlation of

course is that denser places tend to

have lower emissions which isn’t really

all that difficult to figure out if you

think about it basically you know we

substitute in our lives access to the

things we want we go out there and we

hop in our cars and we drive from place

to place and we’re basically using

mobility to get the access we need but

when we live in a denser community

suddenly what we find of course is that

the things we need are closeby and since

the most sustainable trip is the one

that you never had to make in the first

place right suddenly our lives become

instantly more sustainable and it is

possible of course to increase the

density of the communities around us

some places are doing this with new eco

districts developing whole new

sustainable neighborhoods which is nice

work if you can get it but most of the

time what we’re talking about is in fact

reweaving the urban fabric that we

already have so we’re talking about

things like infill development really

sharp little changes to where we have

buildings where we’re developing urban

retrofitting creating different sorts of

spaces and uses out of places that are

already there increasingly we’re

realizing that we don’t even need to

densify an entire city what we need

instead is an average density that rises

to a level where we don’t drive as much

and so on and that can be done by

raising the density in very specific

spots a whole lot right so you could

think of it as tent poles that actually

raise the density of the entire city and

we find that when we do that we can in

fact have a few places that are really

hyper dense within a wider fabric of

places that are perhaps a little more

comfortable

and achieve the same results now we may

find that there are places that are

really really dense and still hold on to

their cars but the reality is that by

and large what we see when we get a lot

of people together with the right

conditions is a threshold effect where

people simply stop driving as much and

increasingly more and more people if

they’re surrounded by places that make

them feel at home give up their cars

altogether and this is a huge huge

energy savings because what comes out of

our tailpipe is really just you know the

beginning of the story with climate

emissions from cars we have the

manufacturer of the car the disposal of

the car all of the parking and freeways

and so on when you can get rid of all of

those because somebody doesn’t use any

of them really you find that you can

actually cut transportation emissions as

much as 90 percent and people are

embracing this all around the world

we’re seeing more and more people

embrace this sort of walk shed life

people are saying that it’s moving from

the idea of the dream home to the dream

neighborhood and when you layer that

over with the kind of ubiquitous

communications that we’re starting to

see what you find is in fact even more

access sort of suffused into spaces some

of its transportation access this is a

magnificent map that shows me in this

case how far I can get from my home in

30 minutes using public transportation

some of it is about walking’s not all

perfect yet this is Google walking maps

I asked how to do the greater Ridge way

and it told me to go via Guernsey it

didn’t tell me that this route may be

missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths

though but the technologies are getting

better and we’re starting to really kind

of crowdsource this navigation and as we

just heard earlier of course we’re also

learning how to put information on dumb

objects things that don’t have any

wiring in them at all we’re learning how

to include in these sort of systems of

notation and navigation part of what

we’re finding with this is that what we

thought was the major point of

manufacturing and consumption which is

to get a bunch of stuff is not in fact

how we really live best in dense

environments what we’re finding is that

what we want is access to the capacities

of things my favorite example is a drill

who here owns a drill a home power drill

okay I do to the average home power

drill is used somewhere between 6 and 20

minutes in its entire lifetime depending

on who you

and you know so what we do is we buy

these drills that have a potential

capacity of thousands of hours of drill

time use them once or twice to put a

hole in the wall and let them sit right

our cities I would put to your

stockpiles of these surplus capacities

and while we could try and figure out

new ways to use those capacities such as

cooking or making ice sculptures or even

a mafia hit you know what we probably

will find is that in fact turning those

products into services that we have

access to when we want them is a small

is a far smarter way to go and in fact

even space itself is turning into a

service we’re finding that people can

share the same spaces do stuff with

vacant space buildings are becoming

bundles of services right so we have new

designs that are helping us take

mechanical things that we used to spend

energy on like heating cooling etc and

turn them into things that we avoid

spending energy on so we light our

buildings with daylight we cool them

with breezes we heat them with sunshine

in fact when we use all these things

what we found is that in some cases

energy use in a building can drop as

much as 90 percent which brings on

another threshold effect I like to call

furnace dumping which is quite simply if

you have a building that doesn’t need to

be heated with a furnace you save a

whole bunch of money up front these

things actually become cheaper to build

than the alternatives now when we look

at being able to you know /r our product

you slash our transportation use slash

you know our our building energy use all

of that is great but it still leaves

something behind and if we’re gonna

really truly become sustainable cities

we need to think a little differently

this is one way to do it this is

Vancouver’s propaganda about how

greenest city they are and certainly

lots of people have taken to heart this

idea that a sustainable city is covered

in greenery so we have visions like this

we have visions like this

we have visions like this now all of

these are fine projects but they really

have kind of missed an essential point

which is it’s not about the Leafs above

it’s about the system’s below do they

for instance capture rainwater so that

we can reduce water use water is energy

intensive do they perhaps include green

infrastructures so that we can take

runoff and water that’s going out of our

houses and clean it and filter it and

grow urban street trees do they connect

us back to the ecosystems around

by for example connecting us to rivers

and allowing for restoration do they

allow for pollination pollinator

pathways that bees and butterflies and

such can come back into our cities do

they even take the very waist matter

that we have from food and fiber and so

forth and turn it back into soil right

and sequester carbon take carbon out of

the air in the process of using our

cities I would submit to you that all of

these things are not only possible

they’re being done right now and that

it’s a darn good thing because right now

our economy by and large operates as

Paul Hawken said by stealing the future

selling it in the present and calling it

GDP and if we have another eight billion

or seven billion or six billion even

people living on a planet where their

cities also steal the future we’re gonna

run out of future really fast but if we

think differently I think that in fact

we can have cities that are not only

zero emissions but have unlimited

possibilities as well thank you very

much

[Applause]