Climate Change: Challenges and Solutions - reflections on week seven

Wow week seven, on the home straight, but I'm also running a week late, so this one might be a bit rushed...

Week 7: Solutions

7.1 Mitigation and Adaption - video

Dr. Tristran Kershaw returns with a brief video, looking at the two key approaches to tackling greenhouse gas emissions - mitigation and adaptation.

Main points:

• Two ways of tackling greenhouse emissions:
• reduce - use less energy, be more efficient, switch off lights, turn down heating etc
• de-carbonise our energy sources - use renewables rather than fossil fuels, UK currently generates 11% from wind, solar and tidal power

1. mitigation - cut back what we do now and attempt to minimise our emissions
2. adaptation - change the way we do things in order to survive what will change anyway

• "locked-in" climate change is inevitable due to greenhouse gases already emitted
• Montgomery Primary School, built in 2011 with PassivHaus energy efficient guidelines, is the first zero-carbon school in the UK
• generates all it's own energy needs
• cleaver ventilation schemes moves hot air from classrooms to cool corridors
• heavy weight structure mitigates against warming, stays cooler during the day, cools at at night through roof vents
• problem is, we won't rebuild all our buildings from scratch, some need to be adapted

7.2 Adapting The Built Environment - article

A rather large document about new building designs.

7.3 Building Design Near You - discussion

We're invited to take a picture of a local building and discuss how has been built with climate change adaption in mind.

The sustainable and environmental components of the constructions are all emphasised for the Exeter and East Devon Growth Point. I found a 3D fly-through of a number of proposed developments happening nearby, including homes, offices and hotels, changes to the local airport, construction of a rail freight point, and a community energy generation plant, and a Science park. So the housing can all be seen to be surrounded by open green spaces, built to high energy efficiency standards, and utilise a purpose-built nearby combined heat and power plant.

7.4 Not In My Back Yard! - video

Prof. Patrick Devine-Wright presents this, there is also a linked article about the Climate Change Act.

Main points:

• interested in social dimension of de-carbonisation of energy supplies
• wholesale changes to energy generation means changes to our land and seascapes etc. - e.g wind turbines and farms
• governments and companies have dealt with "nimby-ism" in a number of ways
1. move away from peoples back yards, i.e. away from where people live and are affected, e.g. off-shore wind generation
2. information - presume that better informed people will be more receptive to having things built near them
3. deal with presumption of selfishness - e.g. community benefits packages - ensure profits to stay locally, often seen as a bribe
• so these responses don't always work
• two important concepts
• "procedural justice" - what people are told when, and how much involvement they have in the decision process affects likelihood of acceptance
• "place attachment" - refers to bonds from people to where they live and how they define themselves
• change needs to be "bottom up" rather than "top down"
• can we develop power supplies within communities?, will the existing big companies prevent this

7.5 Community Benefits Packages - article

On the Renewable UK website, which provides "the voice of wind and marine energy", there is a linked document "Onshore wind: Our Community Commitment", and a statement that "Under the Protocol, developers in England with qualifying projects commit to provide community benefits of £5,000 per MW of installed capacity, or equivalent benefits-in-kind, directly to host communities".

7.6 NIMBYs in Action - discussion

One protest that interested me, as I grew up and lived near Fairmile which became one of the more infamous anti-road building campaigns back in the 1990s. I ended up reading a few pages of this book Direct Action in British Environmentalism on how the protesters were themselves portrayed. In one way they were perceived not as NIMBYs (i.e. by definition concerned local individuals) but as "unemployed outsider activists rejecting the values of 'normal' people". But as the press was largely supportive of the cause, (being against unfettered road-developments, and reflecting that of it's readership), then the personal portraits of the protesters were then constructed to "normalise" them. E.g. Swampy is put in an Armani suit and Animal's GCSE results, membership of MENSA and middle-class background emphasised.

7.7 Test

15 out of 15 again this week!

7.8 Reflections

There was nothing too difficult to understand this week, I've just got behind with stuff. The differences between mitigation and adaptation are something I need to get straight in my mind, mitigation is trying to stop it getting worse, adaptation is accepting climate change is happening and dealing with it.