{"id":3369,"date":"2009-12-16T12:11:35","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T12:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=3369"},"modified":"2009-12-16T12:11:35","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T12:11:35","slug":"global-warming-and-urban-design-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/global-warming-and-urban-design-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"Effective policies re global warming, climate change, urban design, sustainability and landscape architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3373\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3373\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/16\/global-warming-and-urban-design-sustainability\/old-red-sandstone-abroath1\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3373\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3373\" title=\"old-red-sandstone-abroath1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/old-red-sandstone-abroath1-390x269.jpg\" alt=\"Scotland's Old Red Sandstone was laid down in hot, dry, arid conditions - about 400 million years ago. Homo sapiens evolved about 4 million years ago and is not responsible for this climate change\" width=\"390\" height=\"269\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3373\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scotland&#39;s Old Red Sandstone was laid down in hot, dry, arid conditions - about 400 million years ago. Homo sapiens evolved about 4 million years ago and is not responsible for the climate change from hot arid desert to cold wet coast.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The expert science behind the theory of global warming is unimpeachable and unchallengable: thermometers show temperatures are rising <em>and <\/em>tape measures show glaciers are retreating. But several important questions have uncertain answers:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>What percentage of global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels and felling rain forests?<\/li>\n<li>What percentage difference would result from the measures advocated by reasonable scientists?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The answers to these questions would be useful. My guesses are (1) humans have caused only a small percentage of the global warming in the last 20,000 years (2) the measures currently under discussion, though I am in full support of them, would have next-to-no-effect on climate change. If we are serious about doing whatever little we can do to lessen climate change then we should consider the following moderate measures:-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stop world leaders from wasting their time and our money on conferences in Kyoto, Copenhagen etc, or, if this proves difficult, make them spend their time using Copenhagen&#8217;s wonderful bicycle network instead of its limousines, its cavernous conference halls and its spikey cocktail bars<\/li>\n<li>Ban the consumption of meat<\/li>\n<li>Make it illegal to drive children to school &#8211; at any time in any country<\/li>\n<li>Stop wasting hydrocarobons on road transport and air travel (making every place a holiday destination would help)<\/li>\n<li>Stop war and stop making munitions and use the money to build giant solar energy farms in dry deserts<\/li>\n<li>Extend Chinese population control policies to Africa, along with its mineral resource policies<\/li>\n<li>Use\u00a0 suburban gardens for home-grown food and vegetables, especially in America and Australia<\/li>\n<li>Facilitate voluntary euthanasia<\/li>\n<li>Legalize heroin, cannabis, cocaine etc &#8211; to get more tax revenue to spend on protecting rain forests &#8211; and stop the waste of resources on ineffective drug enforcement policies in rich and in poor countries<\/li>\n<li>Vegetate most walls and most roofs in most cities of the future<\/li>\n<li>Put 300 mm of insulation in most roofs, floors and walls<\/li>\n<li>Train more landscape architects and urban designers<\/li>\n<li>Replace the World Bank and the UNDP with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/lang\/eng\/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html\">Jamie Lerner<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8216;In the prison of his days teach the free man how to praise&#8217; (<em>W B Yates<\/em>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Image courtesy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/earthwatcher\/\">Earthwatcher<\/a><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The expert science behind the theory of global warming is unimpeachable and unchallengable: thermometers show temperatures are rising and tape measures show glaciers are retreating. But several important questions have uncertain answers: What percentage of global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels and felling rain forests? What percentage difference would result from the measures [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,10,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}