How Planners Can (and are…) Addressing Climate Change -
Five Principles for the Long Term
- Deal with transportation and land use (or you may as well stop now).
- Tackle private energy consumption.
- Attack the problems piece by piece and from many angles.
- Plan for fundamental changes, …and make fundamental changes happen.
- Build a sense of community.
-Daniel Lerch, Post Carbon Cities
www.postcarboncities.net
Planners have been addressing climate change for years. Smart growth—and its resulting compactly developed mixed use communities with balanced transportation systems are the premier solutions that climate action experts are now promoting. Daniel Lerch, in his new book, “Post Carbon Cities,” identifies five principles for the long term—actions municipalities must take to address climate change, and the first action is “Deal with transportation and land use (or you may as well stop now)”! So the first thing we planners should do to address climate change is affirm that we will continue to do what we have been doing—promote smart growth, work to prevent sprawl development, continue to protect open space, promote mixed use developments and transit, pedestrian and bicycle friendly communities.
In addition, we can work to develop and implement regulatory tools that can help reduce energy use, conserve energy and facilitate generation of clean energy. These include requirements for LEED certified green buildings, requirements for LED streetlights, promotion of local food production and consumption, etc. For more information on municipal actions, see
the Clean Air Cool Planet tool kit at
http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_communities/toolkit_home.php
Bylaws/ordinances to regulate and allow clean energy generating facilities in our communities is one obvious action we can all take. We must be careful to develop regulatory tools that do not inadvertently make it harder, or even impossible, for clean energy developers to build projects in our communities.
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability www.iclei.org has a Cities for Climate Protection program that offers a comprehensive approach to municipal action on climate change. Planners can help their communities join ICLEI, inventory greenhouse gas emissions-to provide a baseline assessment of the problem, develop a plan to act on climate change and then oversee plan implementation.
Please attend the Building Energy conference, sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) in March 2008. There will be a special day-long inter-active pre-conference workshop for planners on climate change. Featured speakers include Professor Matthias Ruth-author of the book, “Smart Growth and Climate Change”, Solitaire Townsend, Co-founder and Managing Director, Futerra Sustainability Communications, London England, Kim Lundgren ICLEI, Rosalie Anders from the city of Cambridge, MA as well as Mikaela Engert, Keene’s planner speaking about adaptation and Angie Vincent from Nashua.
Other planning tools for climate action can be found at: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home.index
http://environment.yale.edu/climate/
http://www.greenplaybook.org/
