Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
advances in the past 30 years, have tended to disguise the extent of the harmful ef-
fects that these and other authors predicted. But many still believe that the problems
revealed by these critics of current practices are real ones, even if some may be in
a longer term context than initially feared and may be modified by the discovery of
new resources and the hope for new technological innovations to solve problems.
These early worries have now been extended and have crystallized around the
need to practice greater sustainability, which has become one of the most used con-
cepts in the past decade. More recently the need for sustainability has been fuelled
by additional concerns, especially the harmful results of fossil fuel burning and the
trend of global warming, all of which has increased the level of pessimism about
the effects of our current progress. As the quotation above shows, former U.S. Vice
President Gore, known for his popular film
The Inconvenient Truth
in 2006 and his
subsequent Nobel Prize, has described the problems of global warming and climate
change—one, and only one, of the key issues driving sustainability—in apocalyptic
terms. Although many have accused Gore of exaggeration there can be little doubt
that we should be preventing, or at least drastically reducing, carbon emissions and
all the other negative externalities of many economic and social processes that are
altering the environment in harmful ways, not simply in urban areas but regionally
and globally. In addition we should be reducing the over-consumption of resources,
many of which are finite, and should also embrace the need to solve the problem of
growing enough food for the world population, although this issue is not primarily
an issue that can be solved primarily by urban actions.
In the increasing concern about our limited degree of sustainability it is the pros-
pect of climate change that looms the largest, which is linked to the consequences
of our actions in urban places. An international organization like the World Wild-
life Fund, which is devoted to the scientific study of the health of the planet and
the impact of humans on animals and habitat, has emphasized the need for drastic
policy changes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which is contributing to climate
change. In their report entitled
Reinventing the City
they claim that the majority of
these emissions come from cities and suggest new policies are needed to drasti-
cally reduce these levels, based on: aggressive energy reduction using best prac-
tices; innovative funding strategies to counteract the traditional limitations of city
budgets; and the use of the latest technical advances (WWF
2010
). Elsewhere the
more activist Greenpeace movement is more prepared to engage in confrontations
to draw attention to the negative impacts of various economic activities upon pol-
luting activities and the destruction of habitat or various species. In many developed
countries concern for the environment has led to progress in many areas, especially
in reducing levels of pollution from the horrors that were created in earlier phases of
industrialization, but there is still a long way to go before these issues are resolved.
Unfortunately the pollution problems have intensified in some areas of the less de-
veloped and rapidly industrializing world, not only in cities, as a recent review of
the situation in China by The Economist noted.
In January 2013 the air in Beijing hit a level of toxicity 40 times above what the World Health
Organization deems safe. A tenth of the country's farmland is poisoned with chemicals
and heavy metals. Half of China's water supplies are unfit even to wash in, let alone drink
