A National Electric Grid…Headlines
From…CharacterTowns.org.
A national electric grid has been and continues to be discussed. Incorporating alternative fuels into the electric generation process is a start; distributing this alternatively generated power throughout the nation is an equally big challenge.
“The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present” by Martin V. Melosi
Summary.
Yellow fever and cholera, along with measles, the plague and other communicable diseases, had their way with city populations before the twentieth century and the discovery of a scientific approach to healthcare and disease prevention and control.
- The worldwide cholera pandemic of 1863-1866 [during the Civil War] began in 1863 in India.
- The table below shows the years when yellow fever and cholera death exceeded 3,000 by city.
- While annual related deaths in Memphis did not exceed 3,000 except in 1878, Memphis experienced thousands of deaths in a series of yellow fever epidemics: 1828, 150 deaths; 1855, 220 deaths; 1867, 550 deaths; 1873, 2,000 deaths; 1878, 5,000+ deaths and 1879, 600 deaths.
- New York City experienced a series of yellow fever epidemics and deaths: 1668, 1690, 1702 [500 deaths equaling 10% of total population], 1743, 1745, 1798 [ 1,524 deaths equaling 4% of total city population]; 1803, 606 deaths; 1805, 262 deaths.
- The World Health Organization estimates that yellow fever still causes 30,000 deaths annually worldwide.
Reaching for the Future, Creative Finance for Smaller Communities by Tom Murphy, Maureen McAvey and Bridget Lane, ULI
SUMMARY.
ULI continues to produce professional studies useful to the development community and the small cities and towns they serve. This one addresses finance programs and their use described in six case studies.
Although the information and programs apply to the entire city, there are valuable lessons and tools for neighborhood association use. The task is to adapt the discussed city-wide techniques and revenue sources to the neighborhood’s setting. The discussion also presents ways for the association and its members to participate in city issues for the betterment of the neighborhood residents and the city.
Contents – August 2023
CONTENTS – August 2023
Character towns, small and large, can respond to important issues in the lives of their residents, issues beyond the traditional purview of city government. A major issue requiring significant civic and institutional action, and hence trust, involves the changing climate. While we are seeing anomalies in weather and sea levels along with halting efforts to create sustainable alternative fuel sources to minimize greenhouse gases and other pollutants, much of the work is not readily visible. Science and technology are not always observable; therefore, citizens must trust that the problems are real and that solutions at all levels of industry and government are necessary, sometimes at great cost. Learning the fundamentals of the issue is critical; hence the articles and books provided below.
THE CLIMATE CHANGE AWARENESS EDITION
CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVITIES…
- “The Causes of Climate Change, A simplified animation of the greenhouse effect”…NASA.
- “Preface for a Comprehensive Energy System Plan”…wck.
- “Small City Climate Action Plans”…wck.
- “Energy Sources for Electric Generation”…EIA.gov.
- “Generators of Greenhouse Gases”, Sources of Greenhouse Gases…US EPA.
- “National Climate Report”, NOAA.
- “NOAA’s Annual Arctic Report Card”.
- “Readings about Small Modular [Nuclear] Reactors” – SMRs…wck.
- “Her Plan for Putting the World Back Together? Trees”…The New York Times.
- “Climate Change: Global Sea Level”…Climate.gov.
- The Bloomberg Carbon Clock, May’58, May’22, May’23
FROM THE PLANNERS’ BOOKSHELF…
- Silent Spring Rachel Carson, originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
- Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, Douglas Brinkley, Harper, 2022.
- Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning, Timothy Beatley, Island Press, Center for Resource Economics, 2011.
- Seeing Trees, A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin, Sonja Dümpelmann, Yale University Press, 2019.
- A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future, Daniel C. Esty (Editor), Ingrid C. Burke (Foreword), Yale University, 2019.
- The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells, Tim Duggan Books; 1st Edition, 2019.
- Losing Earth: A Recent History, Nathaniel Rich, MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
- Plastic Game Changer: How to Reduce Plastic in your Organization to Make a Difference to Plastic Pollution, Amanda Keetley, Less Plastic, 2019.
- Design with Nature, 25th Edition, Ian L. McHarg, Natural History Press in 1971, John Wiley & Sons in 1992.
The Causes of Climate Change
A simplified animation of the greenhouse effect.
Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century to the human expansion of the “greenhouse effect”1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.
Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping. Long-lived gases that remain semi-permanently in the atmosphere and do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as “forcing” climate change. Gases, such as water vapor, which respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are seen as “feedbacks.”
NOAA’s Annual Arctic Report Card
Issued annually since 2006, the Arctic Report Card is a timely and peer-reviewed source for clear, reliable and concise environmental information on the current state of different components of the Arctic environmental system relative to historical records. The Report Card is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in the Arctic environment and science.
National Climate Report – September 2022
From CT.org…This report, like all NOAA reports, is chock full of data about temperatures, rainfall and other climate data. Check out the full report at the cited web address below. NOAA issues the National Climate Report every November. Check it out.
Climate Change: Global Sea Level
Author: Rebecca Lindsey, November 19, 2019
WHAT’S CAUSING SEA LEVEL TO RISE?
Global warming is causing global mean sea level to rise in two ways. First, glaciers and ice sheets worldwide are melting and adding water to the ocean. Second, the volume of the ocean is expanding as the water warms. A third, much smaller contributor to sea level rise is a decline in the amount of liquid water on land—aquifers, lakes and reservoirs, rivers, soil moisture. This shift of liquid water from land to ocean is largely due to groundwater pumping.
“Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson
In 2006, Silent Spring was named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover magazine.
From CT.org…
Ms. Carson revolutionized global thinking on environmental issues. The original printing in 1962 was reprinted in 2002 with an extensive introduction by Linda Lear; an excerpt follows. Ms. Lear’s introduction plus Douglas Brinkley’s recent book, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening provide an excellent picture of this remarkable woman and her impact on the world. The afterword in the latest edition by E.O. Wilson adds to the aura.
“Silent Spring Revolution” by Douglas Brinkley
New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
With the detonation of the Trinity explosion in the New Mexico desert in 1945, the United States took control of Earth’s destiny for the first time. After the Truman administration dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, a grim new epoch had arrived. During the early Cold War years, the federal government routinely detonated nuclear devices in the Nevada desert and the Marshall Islands. Not only was nuclear fallout a public health menace, but entire ecosystems were contaminated with radioactive materials. During the 1950s, an unprecedented postwar economic boom took hold, with America becoming the world’s leading hyper-industrial and military giant. But with this historic prosperity came a heavy cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, the insecticide DDT poisoned ecosystems, wildlife perished, and chronic smog blighted major cities.
Crashing Plates and Big Ice
The Climate Has been Changing for Quite a While.
ROCKIN’ AND ROLLIN’. We struggle to fully appreciate the impact of the shifting Tectonic Plates and the Ice Ages. They happened a really long time ago and the “to and fro” of massive ice sheets over hundreds of millions of years, combined with tectonic plate shifts, was the original “rock and roll” era; the land was formed, and reformed, with dramatic fluctuations in sea levels.
CRASHING “PLATES”: The World Settles In. The shifting tectonic plate story is hard to fathom. Michael Grunwald tells the story as he describes the formation of the Everglades, “It began with a bang about 300 million years ago [MYA], after the fish but before the birds, with the cataclysmic shifts of tectonic plates that crunched the planet’s major landforms into a single supercontinent called Pangaea.”