#not what most would call a “livable and sustainable country/climate” but there were people there

[kp777]

By Thom Hartmann

Common Dreams

Dec. 1, 2023

More than 70,000 people from nearly 200 countries — including an estimated 700+ fossil fuel industry lobbyists (there were 636 at the last conference) — are arriving this week in Dubai for the opening of the 28th “Conference Of Parties” (COP28) that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP is the main decision-making body of the UNFCCC.

And already the Republican Party is doing what it can to sabotage any efforts by the Biden administration to help the world adapt to climate change while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

The Council on Foreign Relations notes that for most of the poor nations of the world, “women, girls, and historically marginalized people, are bearing the brunt of the impacts of climate change…”

COP28 will help focus world and media attention on the climate emergency that 50 years of intentional lies funded by the world’s largest fossil fuel producers have helped create.

Through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), America has been funding efforts to help these groups deal with the impacts of the climate emergency. As the CFR notes:

“But the current divisive political climate within Congress has put programs like this in its crosshairs. Despite the program’s timeliness—with weather and climate extremes increasing in every region across the globe—Congress recently defunded the program. The money previously authorized for this work was withdrawn on the grounds that the money would potentially support abortion services or advocacy abroad, violating the Helms Amendment.”

Abortion, however, is purely a red herring being used by House Republicans to undercut pretty much any efforts by the US government to help a world now afire in part because of American greenhouse gas emissions and the lies promulgated for decades by massive US oil, coal, and methane companies that heavily fund the GOP.

As the CFR notes in the next paragraph:

“The premise of this attack is entirely and demonstrably false. … USAID funding to Global Fund for Women is used solely for climate resilience and crisis response work. Yet the funds were still revoked.”

And that’s just Republican opposition to helping the poor countries of the world deal with the consequences of US emissions. Taking any serious steps to cut fossil fuel production or consumption — after the Biden Administration’s spectacular success with the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion dedicated to climate change passed in the last Congress — are now on hold.

As Politico notes:

“GOP control of Congress’ lower chamber will make it hard to do more internationally.”

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel producing nations of the world are banding together to block serious efforts at shifting the world away from their products and toward renewable energy sources.

In a particularly cynical move, a Saudi program called the “Oil Demand Sustainability Programme (ODSP)” is reaching out to poor countries, particularly in Africa, to encourage them to expand their use of oil to power transportation, housing, and electricity.

Instead of helping poor countries solarize their power systems and electrify their transportation sector, they’re encouraging them to build oil-fired power plants to generate electricity and manufacture more low-cost gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks.

The Guardianquotes Mohamed Adow, the director of the thinktank Power Shift Africa:

“The Saudi government is like a drug dealer trying to get Africa hooked on its harmful product. “The rest of the world is weaning itself off dirty and polluting fossil fuels and Saudi Arabia is getting desperate for more customers and is turning its sights on Africa. It’s repulsive.”

Similarly, Russia — a country with an economy about the size of Italy that is almost entirely based on fossil fuel production — has declared their intention to block any efforts to reduce demand for the oil and gas they produce. As Politico notes:

“[T]here are signs Russia’s geopolitical gambit could disrupt the talks both this year and next year…”

This COP28 meeting is being held in the capital city of the world’s seventh largest producer of fossil fuels. As Meteor Blades notes at Daily Kos:

“Now, you might be saying to yourself, isn’t having a climate conference in a monarchical petrostate kind of like having a middle school on Jeffrey Epstein’s island? You wouldn’t be wrong.”

Nonetheless, COP28 will help focus world and media attention on the climate emergency that 50 years of intentional lies funded by the world’s largest fossil fuel producers have helped create.

For example, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Antarctica and, this week in advance of COP28, tried to warn the world:

“I have just returned from Antarctica—the sleeping giant. A giant being awoken by climate chaos. Together, Antarctica and Greenland are melting well over three times faster than they were in the early 1990s. “It is profoundly shocking to stand on the ice of Antarctica and hear directly from scientists how fast the ice is disappearing. … “Leaders must not let the hopes of people around the world for a sustainable planet melt away.”

Some of the wealthiest and most powerful people, companies, and countries in the world are working to frustrate efforts to salvage a livable planet for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

We can’t let them prevail.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

[xtruss]

FUTURE PLANET

The Ancient Persian Way to Keep Cool

— By Kimiya Shokoohi | 10th August 2021

From ancient Egypt to the Persian Empire, an ingenious method of catching the breeze kept people cool for millennia. In the search for emissions-free cooling, the "wind catcher" could once again come to our aid.

The city of Yazd in the desert of central Iran has long been a focal point for creative ingenuity. Yazd is home to a system of ancient engineering marvels that include an underground refrigeration structure called yakhchāl, an underground irrigation system called qanats, and even a network of couriers called pirradaziš that predate postal services in the US by more than 2,000 years.

Among Yazd's ancient technologies is the wind catcher, or bâdgir in Persian. These remarkable structures are a common sight soaring above the rooftops of Yazd. They are often rectangular towers, but they also appear in circular, square, octagonal and other ornate shapes.

Yazd is said to have the most wind catchers in the world, though they may have originated in ancient Egypt. In Yazd, the wind catcher soon proved indispensable, making this part of the hot and arid Iranian Plateau livable.

Though many of the city's wind catchers have fallen out of use, the structures are now drawing academics, architects and engineers back to the desert city to see what role they could play in keeping us cool in a rapidly heating world.

The openings of the towers face the prevailing wind, catching it and funneling it down to the interior below (Credit: Alamy)

As a wind catcher requires no electricity to power it, it is both a cost-efficient and green form of cooling. With conventional mechanical air conditioning already accounting for a fifth of total electricity consumption globally, ancient alternatives like the wind catcher are becoming an increasingly appealing option.

There are two main forces that drive the air through and down into the structures: the incoming wind and the change in buoyancy of air depending on temperature – with warmer air tending to rise above cooler, denser air. First, as air is caught by the opening of a wind catcher, it is funneled down to the dwelling below, depositing any sand or debris at the foot of the tower. Then the air flows throughout the interior of the building, sometimes over subterranean pools of water for further cooling. Eventually, warmed air will rise and leave the building through another tower or opening, aided by the pressure within the building.

The shape of the tower, alongside factors like the layout of the house, the direction the tower is facing, how many openings it has, its configuration of fixed internal blades, canals and height are all finely tuned to improve the tower's ability to draw wind down into the dwellings below.

Some of the earliest wind-catching technology comes from Egypt 3,300 years ago

Using the wind to cool buildings has a history stretching back almost as long as people have lived in hot desert environments. Some of the earliest wind-catching technology comes from Egypt 3,300 years ago, according to researchers Chris Soelberg and Julie Rich of Weber State University in Utah. Here, buildings had thick walls, few windows facing the Sun, openings to take in air on the side of prevailing winds and an exit vent on the other side – known in Arabic as malqaf architecture. Though some argue that the birthplace of the wind catcher was Iran itself.

Wherever it was first invented, wind catchers have since become widespread across the Middle East and North Africa. Variations of Iran's wind catchers can be found in the barjeels of Qatar and Bahrain, the malqaf of Egypt, the mungh of Pakistan, and many other places, notes Fatemeh Jomehzadeh of the University of Technology Malaysia and colleagues.

Due to long disuse, many of Iran's windcatchers are not in a good state of repair. But some researchers would like to see them restored to working order (Credit: Alamy)

The Persian civilisation is widely considered to have added structural variations to allow for better cooling – such as combining it with its existing irrigation system to help to cool the air down before releasing it throughout the home. In Yazd's hot, dry climate, these structures proved remarkably popular, until the city became a hotspot of soaring ornate towers seeking the desert wind. The historical city of Yazd was recognised as a Unesco World Heritage site in 2017, in part for its proliferation of wind catchers.

As well as performing the functional purpose of cooling homes, the towers also had a strong cultural significance. In Yazd, the wind catchers are as much a part of the skyline as the Zoroastrian Fire Temple and Tower of Silence. Among them is the wind catcher at the Dowlatabad Abad Gardens, said to be the tallest in the world at 33m (108ft) and one of the few wind catchers still in operation. Housed in an octagonal building, it overlooks a fountain stretching past rows of pine trees.

Inconveniences like pests entering the chutes and the gathering of dust and desert debris have meant many have turned away from traditional wind catchers

The emissions-free cooling efficacy of such wind catchers make some researchers argue that they are due a revival.

Parham Kheirkhah Sangdeh has extensively studied the scientific application and surrounding culture of wind catchers in contemporary architecture at Ilam University in Iran. He says inconveniences like pests entering the chutes and the gathering of dust and desert debris have meant many have turned away from traditional wind catchers. In their place are mechanical cooling systems, such as conventional air-conditioning units. Often, those options are powered by fossil fuels and use refrigerants that act as powerful greenhouse gases if released into the atmosphere.

The wind catchers of Iran have inspired modern designs in Europe, the US and elsewhere, as architects turn towards passive forms of cooling (Credit: Alamy)

The advent of modern cooling technologies has long been blamed for the deterioration of traditional methods in Iran, the historian of Iranian architecture Elizabeth Beazley wrote in 1977. Without constant maintenance, the harsh climate of the Iranian Plateau has worn away many structures from wind catchers to ice houses. Kheirkhah Sangdeh also sees the shift away from wind catchers as in part down to a tendency among the public to engage with technologies from the West.

"There needs to be some changes in cultural perspectives to use these technologies. People need to keep an eye on the past and understand why energy conservation is important," Kheirkhah Sangdeh says. "It starts with recognising cultural history and the importance of energy conservation."

Kheirkhah Sangdeh hopes to see Iran's wind catchers updated to add energy-efficient cooling to existing buildings. But he has met many barriers to his work in the form of ongoing international tensions, the coronavirus pandemic and ongoing water shortage. "Things are so bad in Iran that [people] take it day by day," says Kheirkhah Sangdeh.

Yazd is said to have the most wind catchers of any city in the world (Credit: Alamy)

Fossil-fuel-free methods of cooling like the wind catcher might well be due a revival, but to a surprising extent they are already present – albeit in a less magnificent form than those in Iran – in many Western countries.

In the UK, some 7,000 variations of wind catchers were installed in public buildings between 1979 and 1994. They can be seen from buildings such as the Royal Chelsea Hospital in London, to supermarkets in Manchester.

These modernised wind catchers bear little resemblance to Iran's towering structures. On one three-storey building on a busy road in north London, small hot pink ventilation towers allow passive ventilation. Atop a shopping centre in Dartford, conical ventilation towers rotate to catch the breeze with the help of a rear wing that keeps the tower facing the prevailing wind.

The US too has adopted wind-catcher-inspired designs with enthusiasm. One such example is the visitor center at Zion National Park in southern Utah. The park sits in a high desert plateau, comparable to Yazd in climate and topography, and the use of passive cooling technologies including the wind catcher nearly eliminated the need for mechanical air-conditioning. Scientists have recorded a temperature difference of 16C (29F) between the outside and inside of the visitor centre, despite the many bodies regularly passing through.

There is further scope for the spread of the wind catcher, as the search for sustainable solutions to overheating continues. In Palermo, Sicily, researchers have found that the climate and prevailing wind conditions make it a ripe location for a version of the Iranian wind catcher. This October, meanwhile, the wind catcher is set to have a high-profile position at the World Expo fair in Dubai, as part of a network of conical buildings in the Austrian pavilion, where the Austrian architecture firm Querkraft has taken inspiration from the Arabic barjeel version of the wind tower.

While researchers such as Kheirkhah Sangdeh argue that the wind catcher has much more to give in cooling homes without fossil fuels, this ingenious technology has already migrated further around the world than you might think. Next time you see a tall vented tower on top of a supermarket, high-rise or school, look carefully – you might just be looking at the legacy of the magnificent wind catchers of Iran.

The emissions from travel it took to report this story were 0kg CO2. The digital emissions from this story are an estimated 1.2g to 3.6g CO2 per page view.

[enst1000bk]

Planning for the Future Will Help in the Present Too

This week, our topics are both heavily influenced by human activity on the Earth: Urban Design, and population control (and in accordance with that, overconsumption). Without humans, these are issues that earth would not have to face by itself, and thus these are entirely manmade issues. First, we should talk about population control because without the increasing growth of this planets population, we wouldn’t have to worry about designing better and more efficient cities. Obviously, we have limited resources on this Earth and one of them is the amount of space we have. Currently there are approximately 7,690,000,000 people on this Earth (WorldoMeter). In the beginning of the 1900’s there were approximately 1,600,000,000. In just 100 years the population had a growth rate of well over 500%.  

To put that into perspective, in the 8,000 year period between 8,000 B.C. and 1 A.D. there was a growth rate of about 0.05%. 

Currently, we have a population growth of about 1.5% (relatively low), which accounts for an additional 82 million people per year worldwide.  We’ll touch on this again, but one of the reasons that the population growth is growing so rapidly is not because of a huge increase in fertility, it is actually because the mortality rate is decreasing and thus it is taking longer for people to die. The average life expectancy worldwide in the 19th century was between 30-40 years old, where as now the average person can expect to live close to double that, between 73 and 80 years old (Roser, 2013). As more and more people are living longer lives, that means the average person’s consumption rate will increase drastically because they have an incredibly larger amount of time in which they have things to consume. It is important to note however that not all population and consumption are controlled equally, and often times poverty stricken areas are stuck with the negative effects of overpopulation and overconsumption that wealthy groups and individuals get to enjoy. As we discussed in class, 85% on the human population comes from countries that are still developing or have yet to be developed, yet 90% of the population growth every year is contained within these same countries. This means that the majority of the human population is being crowded into countries that do not have the resources (money and space) to properly accommodate them. This brings a person’s quality of life plummeting to the lowest possible levels. Adding on to the injustice that is population control and overconsumption, about 15-17% of the population that resides in developed countries control 75% of the consumption of goods and services worldwide. This means that the rich and privileged people born into developing countries get to consume what they please and do not have to worry about the problems they are creating because they do not deal with the consequences directly. This further continues the systemic cycle of poverty and cripples the chances of a developing nation to become a fully developed country. If New Yorkers think the subway is crowded, imagine how crowded public transportation in China or India is!

Earth is having a hard time keeping up with human activity as it is with its 7 billion plus human inhabitants, and as that number keeps growing the Earth is going to have a harder time dealing with the consequences of humans. In fact, we could be running out of time to save the earth. Some scientists are saying that if we don’t start to reverse the effects of humans on the planet by as early as 2030, the effects will be nonreversible and we’ll have sealed our fate as a species (Sutherland, 2018). Currently, if every single person on Earth lived like the average American the Earth would only be able to sustain that life for about 1/5 of our population, or approximately 1.5 billion people (Hwang, 2018). This does not even begin to compensate for the growth of humans expected to come in the following years, and only analyzes current levels of consumption and population, which means the problem is only going to get worse. As discussed in class, almost half of the population of the world live with less than $2.50 in American money every day, and 80% of the world survives on less than $10 (Shah, 2013). These numbers struck me as surprising so I tried to evaluate my own daily spending and here is the math I came up with. My monthly rent is $850, which comes out to about $28 a day. I budget about $50 on food in a week which makes up about $7 a day. My monthly electricity bill is around $35 which is about $5 a day. In a week I usually spend about $15 a week on transportation via the subway, so we’ll call that $3 a day. These are all of the things that I use on a daily basis, which does not take into consideration the fact that sometimes I will buy new clothes, or spend money on tickets to see a show, or other purchases that are not directly for my every day needs. This also does not take into consideration my environmental impact and how much money I am actually spending like in a full cost analysis. This means that at the bare minimum I am spending is about $45 a day, approximately 15 times more than someone living in poverty! I am also a college student living on a budget so I’m sure the average price for an American is WAY higher than mine!

As the population continues to climb, people find themselves in more and more crowded living spaces. Cities in particular tend to host the most life and contain the most people. They take up 4% of the Earth’s land but more than half of the population lives in a city (Lavelle, 2019). Cities are important because they act as major hubs for human activity, but often times they are associated with high levels of economic footprint. One way that we can slow down the effects of human consumption and overpopulation is to make cities more sustainable. Here are a few ways cities can aim to be more sustainable, whether that be adopting new policies or creating them as new cities are being built:

1) Vertical Gardens: Many cities lack the green space to grow food, but have plenty of vertical real estate to take advantage of. Much like skyscrapers present the opportunity to hold more people, vertical gardens are the modern day approach to how to be greener in cities. These gardens can help grow sustainably sourced foods as well as help eliminate some of the cities carbon footprint. 2) Resilience to natural disasters and climate change: In 2017 the World Bank invested over $4 billion into disaster risk management in cities. By building cities to prevent natural disasters like having floodgates and earthquake proof buildings, there will be less money to spend on repairs in the future.   3) Access to public resources: Many cities have public features like garbage clean up and recycling programs, as well as public transportation, good education, and public health centers. However, if not everyone can access these systems fairly then the wellbeing of the city goes down. This means to make these services available for everyone including the poor and poverty stricken, instead of just the wealthy who can afford to live without it on their own dime.

Blog Question: Would it be more effective to try and tackle problems of overpopulation first or overconsumption and why?

Word Count: 1,251

                                              Works Cited

Growth Rate [Digital image]. (2019, February 26). Retrieved from http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Hwang, A. D. (n.d.). 7.5 billion and counting: How many humans can the Earth support? Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/7-5-billion-and-counting-how-many-humans-can-the-earth-support-98797

Lavelle, M. (2015, October 03). How Do We Make Cities Sustainable? Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/energy/great-energy-challenge/big-energy-question/how-to-make-our-cities-more-livable-and-sustainable/

Roser, M. (2013, May 23). Life Expectancy. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

Shah, A. (2017, January 7). Poverty Facts and Stats. Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

Sutherland, S. (2018, October 17). We have 12 years to save the world. What      do we do now? Retrieved from https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/we-have-until-2030-to-save-the-world-what-do-we-do-now-to-tackle-climate-change/114959

World Population: Past, Present, and Future [Digital image]. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

[shirlleycoyle]

There Is No Sustainable Way to Fly

Last month, just weeks after climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time’s Person of the Year, JetBlue announced that it would go carbon neutral on all its domestic flights by the end of the summer, becoming the first major airline in the world to make such a commitment. News coverage of the announcement highlighted the airline’s intention to “use an alternative fuel source for flights leaving from San Francisco” along with “direct flight paths, new planes and other technologies.”

In other words, the company was hoping to innovate its way out of the aviation industry’s massive impact on the environment.

But a closer look revealed that there was no magic bullet behind this seemingly bold initiative. The fine print of JetBlue’s press release reveals that the airline doesn’t plan to reach this ambitious goal by decreasing the amount of carbon its planes spew into the air, but by making up for that carbon somewhere else. The airline will reach net zero emissions by funding “offsets,” or projects such as wind turbines and tree plantings that decrease global emissions overall.

Fly a plane here, plant a tree there—that’s the plan, for the most part.

JetBlue isn’t alone in offering such carbon offsets as an antidote to customer anxieties about air travel, and neither is it the only airline seeking to develop green aviation technology such as biofuels and electric jet engines; just last week the British aviation industry announced a similar plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. These policies promise to help the aviation industry go green without having to cancel a single flight, but the solutions they offer are too little and too late. The only sustainable way to fly, it turns out, is to fly less.

“The problem we face with air travel is that at present there aren’t good low-carbon alternatives,” said Peter Miller, a regional director at the National Resources Defense Council who focuses on clean energy advocacy. “There are a lot of technologies that are on the drawing board or just getting off the drawing board, but they’re not here yet, so the question is what we should do in the interim.”

On a global scale, cars are a far larger contributor to climate change than planes: air travel still only accounts for around 10 percent of global emissions from transportation, compared to 60 percent from automobiles. As a result, the gradual increase in electric vehicle ownership and gasoline fuel economy could help put a big dent in carbon emissions over the next few decades.

But our climate challenge isn’t as simple as carbon quantity: these statistics disguise the uniquely devastating short-term impact that air travel has on the atmosphere. Jet engines emit not only carbon dioxide but also sulphates, nitrous gases, and icy vapor streams called contrails, all of which trap heat in the atmosphere. Furthermore, they emit these greenhouse gases directly into the atmosphere at high altitudes, which research suggests could contribute to a disproportionate amount of short-term warming.

Recent climate forecasts say we must cut greenhouse gas emissions in half over the next ten years in order to stave off global catastrophe, but the aviation industry has thus far been moving in the opposite direction. One recent estimate found that emissions from air travel had risen more than 1.5 times faster than previously predicted, and the fuel inefficiency of American carriers was partially to blame. Worse still, the number of annual airline passengers is currently projected to double by 2037, which means that any path toward a livable future will have to involve finding a sustainable way to fly. But the solutions that major airlines like JetBlue have embraced thus far are nowhere near guaranteed to counteract the damage that commercial aviation is doing to the planet.

Take offsetts, for instance. Even before JetBlue pledged to go carbon-neutral by funding such carbon-reducing projects, airlines including United and Delta already gave customers the option to purchase offset credits for their flight, paying a little extra to assuage their flying guilt.

These measures might sound like climate-forward action on the airlines’ part, but in many places such offsets will soon become far more common. Next year will begin the first phase of the United Nation’s aviation emissions plan, CORSIA, which requires airlines in signatory countries to commit to keeping their emissions at 2020 levels by purchasing offsets or using sustainable fuels. The plan will remain voluntary until 2027.

But Jessica Green, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies climate governance, said there’s no way to know for sure how much an offset is actually helping stop climate change, especially when an airline like JetBlue doesn’t reveal what kind of offsets it buys.

“Offsets vary a lot in quality,” Green said, “and a lot of times they’re purchased through aggregators of credits, which makes it harder to know where the project actually came from or what it’s actually doing. When you click the button it’s like, ‘oh, this is two tons of carbon,’ and you have no idea whether it was a wind farm in Malawi or methane capture in Brazil.”

A recent ProPublica investigation into reforestation projects in South America, for instance, found that the projects were completed behind schedule and delivered far less than their expected carbon benefit.

“It’s not de facto problematic, but given that we know there’s a lot of iffy projects out there, the less transparency we have about where these offsets come from, the less of a service it does,” Green said. “It also creates this mentality that you can just click a button and then you’ve been absolved of your sins.”

Sustainable fuels like the ones JetBlue will use in San Francisco are a similarly insufficient solution. The airline plans to adopt Neste biofuels, made from recycled organic material, which emit up to 80 percent less carbon than traditional fuel. Multiple European airlines including Germany’s Lufthansa have already tested these fuels on short-haul flights over the past few years, and major carriers like United are also planning to buy millions of barrels of waste-produced biofuel, and the U.S. Department of Energy is funding experiments in producing cheap fuel from fats and greases. But Miller says the infrastructure to make these fuels affordable on a large scale does not exist yet, and could take decades to develop.

“The U.S. airline industry is taking clear actions to grow more sustainable while also continuing to serve the needs of our customers,” said Carter Yang, spokesperson for Airlines for America, the lobbying group representing the country’s biggest airlines. “We’re continuously investing in more fuel-efficient planes, developing sustainable aviation fuel and implementing more efficient procedures in the air and on the ground,” Yang added, would help U.S. airlines meet CORSIA’s targets.

It’s equally unclear how much electric airplanes could do to mitigate the adverse impact of the aviation industry. Right now, the most advanced electric batteries from companies like Rolls Royce, Pipistrel, and startup ZER0 (dubbed the “Tesla of the skies”) can’t power flights of longer than a few hundred miles, and it’s unlikely that they ever will—an average jet engine is more than fifty times as powerful as the best lithium-ion battery, and the battery is much more expensive.

If the cost of such batteries ever comes down, electric planes might be able to replace many short-term flights. Norway, for instance, has pledged to take all its domestic flights electric by 2040. But passengers might traverse such short distances just as easily on transportation methods like trains and buses, which are cheaper, better-tested, and also environmentally friendly. There’s also the matter of where the electricity for these batteries comes from: if you juice them with electricity that comes from burning coal, you aren’t helping.

The best way to reduce air travel emissions in the immediate future, then, might be for people to simply fly less. Achieving that on a large scale might sound impossible—we can’t just demand that millions of people cancel their vacations—but it looks a bit easier once you realize that airline passengers are a far smaller group than car owners or users of electricity. Despite the rapid recent expansion of the aviation industry in China and Southeast Asia, some estimates suggest that more than 80 percent of the world’s population has never boarded a plane. Furthermore, a small group of frequent fliers generates a disproportionate share of emissions: the 12 percent of Americans who took six or more flights in 2017 were responsible for at least two-thirds of air travel emissions in that year, probably even more.

“JetBlue’s commitment to reduce their emissions is valuable,” Miller said, “and we have to support the decisions of companies to do more than they’re required to do. But it’s not a substitute for societal action, or national action, or international action to achieve emissions reductions.” Motherboard reached out to JetBlue and the other airlines mentioned in this story, but they did not respond to requests for comment.

In the absence of revolutionary technology that will drastically reduce the environmental impact of commercial flights, the best way for policymakers to make flying sustainable may be to discourage this frequent flying, especially when the trips are for business meetings and academic conferences that might just as easily be accomplished with a Skype call. Green said governments could accomplish this by subsidizing train travel instead of new airports, or by instituting what she calls a “runway tax”—charging consumers or airlines themselves an extra few hundred dollars to take off or land at an airport. Such taxes are always easier for corporations to absorb than individual consumers, but as Thunberg herself has pointed out, the international community has all but refused to touch the aviation industry—the Paris climate agreement, for instance, featured not a single binding resolution regarding air travel.

In the absence of any such regulation, Green said, the major airlines are still seeking to position themselves as climate-conscious, but on their terms.

“I think the airline industry, especially with this normative shift about flight-shaming, sees the writing on the wall,” she said. “I think they view initiatives like this as kind of a preemptive way to buy themselves some more time.”

There Is No Sustainable Way to Fly syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Revolution in society must begin with the inner, psychological revolution of the individual. Most of us want to see a radical transformation of the social structure…however radical that social revolution may be its nature is static if there is no inward revolution, no psychological transformation…However much and however wisely legislation may be promulgated, society is always in the process of decay because revolution must take place within, not merely outwardly. — Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom The revolution will only come as a result of inner, mental transformation, as Krishnamurti foretold. Political movements may urge people towards an outward revolution of the economic structure, but ultimately, it is up to each one of us as individuals to awaken from the slumber that imperialism and capitalism has imposed on us. This is a huge problem in the West: expecting some sort of political party or savior to rearrange the structure of society, from the top down of the establishment, without a viable protest movement and without on-the-street citizen engagement. Liberal “progressives” are therefore attracted to social democracy. Piecemeal reform, led by establishment Democrats offering a “New New Deal” to industry and workers will most likely lead us to the slaughterhouse, to the bottomless pit Western civilization has been leading us for centuries. “Green capitalism” is another lie advanced by such mainstream social and environmental justice advocates and Democrats. There’s been a lot of talk among progressives and self-styled Leftists about social democracy. Bernie Sanders talked up social democracy on his campaign, heaping praise on the Scandinavian countries as models the US should emulate. This seems to reveal a misunderstanding of how social change functions: in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden there is more cultural contentment, higher social cohesion, which has led the political structure to allow for universal healthcare, a strong welfare system, as well as safeguards against high wealth inequality. Consider the Danish concept of hygge, Swedish lagom, and the Dutch term gezelligheid: there are no comparable factors in the US that engender these sorts of community/quality of life feelings. The frontier cultural roots in the US are shallow, and the dog-eat-dog ethos of laissez-faire capitalism has not allowed for the fertile soil of social/collective well-being that we find in parts of Europe. For an (admittedly poor) analogy, if you work in corporate America, imagine trying to explain to your boss or colleagues how you want to implement the Taoist concept of wu-wei in the workplace. In other words, the socio-cultural history and background affects the economic-material structure of a nation’s political economy. What Sanders and progressives are proposing is the reverse: that an economic leveling will create a more just, sane society without altering the underlying ideological sickness and contradictions in US culture. This type of argument is used by commentators who talk about a “politics of fear”. Well, politics does not exist in a vacuum: as I’ve said for years, we live in an outright culture of fear. This sort of muddle-headed thinking is naïve at best, and outright dangerous at worst. Promoting peace and wealth redistribution to developing countries could possibly turn the tide in the US towards achieving a slightly more civil public sphere. Yet, the self-serving agendas of Sanders and social democrats (and all the baggage revolving around entryism that social dems bring with them) would mostly benefit the US middle class, and while the poor could theoretically stand to gain in an upturn of the business cycle in a future 21st century Keynesian economy, another large recession would likely wipe out many of the gains, with politicians returning to their default mode of “austerity politics”. Not to mention the fact that social democrats will continually vote to favor “good jobs” at the expense of the environment, because they have little sense of how industry externalizes the costs of doing business onto the natural world. The Four Rotten Pillars of the American Establishment Capitalism is the root cause of over-consumption, militarism, racism, imperialism. Any reform based on social democracy is bound to fail, because it refuses to confront the structural causes of a crumbling society: capital and its accumulation to the few at the expense of the many. Capitalism, not just simply neoliberalism, must be ripped up by the roots. Historically, the entrenched militarism, and the hoarding of capital into the hands of a few oligarchs is linked to four ideological trends in the US. The first, I like to call “Cultural Puritanism”. This thinking goes back to the original Pilgrims, many of whom were religious extremists who believed in predestination: that God had pre-planned who will ascend to heaven and go to hell. In this formulation, it was simply the will of God that determined who was rich and poor in colonial America, and who was virtuous or wicked. Thus, this Puritan/Calvinist belief allowed for the justification for the huge gap between rich and poor, and the faithful spread the lie that the rich simply are the way they are due to God’s decision, because of their “Protestant work ethic”, while the poor were simply lazy, good-for-nothing troublemakers. Fast forward to today, and we can see this thinking hasn’t changed much at all. The second ideological lie relates to those most abhorrent of imperialist ideas, specifically the “Monroe Doctrine” and “Manifest Destiny”. Here the expansionists of the 18th century had arrogantly decided to expand the US “from sea to shining sea”, and to subjugate and pillage Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America at the behest of the capricious whims of US oligarchs. Today, the US has spread its reach worldwide, and the globe is divided into regions: CENTCOM, AFRICOM, etc., with special operations underway in over 130 countries. The third, and perhaps the most deadly, lie spread by Western capitalists is the myth of Social Darwinism. Building on the first two ideologies above, social Darwinists believed that the poor were genetically inferior, and therefore of no use to civil society. The reserve armies of unemployed and the working poor could not be helped: their ill-health and ignorance were inexorable, terminal conditions. This led directly to the popularization of eugenics and fascism, culminating with the regimes of Hilter, Mussolini, Franco, etc. The fourth lie, and perhaps most difficult to untangle, is the lie of positivism. There is no time here for an in-depth explanation, but positivists look to purely empirical evidence to create psychological and social theory. Feelings, thoughts, emotions, and the inner world are meaningless: this blighted view of the world led to the bizarre/deranged dead-ends of psychological behaviorism. Positivistic theory is used today to support the idea of continual technological progress and materialism, endless economic growth, a deluge of useless “self-help” literature, drugging our children in schools by abhorrently diagnosing them as hyperactive or having short attention spans, etc. Oh, and if anyone cares, almost 70% of American adults are on at least one prescription drug today, more than half take two regularly, and 20% of the population is on five or more medications. Americans, for the most part, have become childlike, obedient, faceless drones: conformist “last men” who are too afraid and/or too intoxicated by Aldous Huxley’s “soma” brew of mass media and consumer distractions. All empires eventually crumble and fail, and eventually break apart, and the US will be no exception.  We are the fascists now, upholding a patriarchal, ultraviolent social order, “inverted totalitarians” if you prefer Wolin’s phraseology. It’s time for us to face the music, because the ship is sinking. Only a radical reconstruction of society along participatory/direct democratic lines will allow for us to survive the coming economic, ecological, and climate change shocks. Many parts of the world may devolve into small bands and tribes of semi-nomadic “climate refugees” by the end of the century, depending on how the models of climatologists play out. Major nation-states may no longer have the power to enforce rules related to borders, genetic modifications and bioethics, artificial intelligence, cyberhacking, and a host of other issues. America is an Empire, not a country. The USA will only be a nation when it removes the delusion of “American Exceptionalism” and joins hands with other countries to cooperate and create a peaceful, multipolar world order. America can only become a nation, and not an empire, by reconnecting with its “national soul”: by embracing leaders who embody and promote Native American values which allow for harmony between humans and nature. The egalitarianism and gender equality of the Haudenosaunee tribes was a model that the Founders looked to when drafting the US Constitution. The solutions aren’t going to be found in technocratic social democratic financial matters: only revolutionary changes, such as orienting community around sustainable agriculture, will allow for a livable world for our descendants. We don’t need more GDP growth or even mainstream jobs: our system is destroying the Earth. We need more walking barefoot, more music and dancing around the village fire, more stargazing, more herbal medicine, more communal farming. Capitalism and the nation-states have only been around for a few hundred years, and their time is passing. Vltchek’s Revolutionary Optimism Quite possibly, the most poignant essay I’ve read this year was “Love and Western Nihilism” by Andre Vltchek. There is a spiritual ennui, a gray-cloud of myopia and inertia enveloping the West. Our gadgets and phones take up more and more of our time, leaving less for friends, family, and even the ability to truly love. Conformism is the norm: we can talk about US football (for those souls still watching, I have only names for you: RIP Mike Webster, Junior Seau), or banal TV series, or what a buffoon our president is, but staring down the abyss of how empty and vacuous our culture has become is too hard for most people to bear. Predictably, it is people who have either traveled widely or live(d) in other countries who I can commiserate with the most here in the states. Most US citizens suffer from the myth of American innocence, as Barry Spector put it so well. Late-stage capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, whatever you want to call it: the system is not going to be able to be gradually reformed. Why not? The neoliberal market revolves so heavily around low wage service jobs, and our economic system revolves around the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) corporations, so much so that simply instituting a new progressive tax policy would result in instant capital flight. Take a look at what’s happening in Venezuela: private multinational corporations are hoarding food, household items, as well as deliberately slowing production in key sectors in lockstep with the US- backed opposition. Foreign banks are refusing to lend and extend lines of credit, citing spurious reasons of unrest: the unrest caused by those who wish to see a military-corporate coup, with the predictable reactionary, ethno-nationalist, neo-fascists already popping up, street-fighting in Caracas and the countryside. Greece is another recent example: the EU oligarchs punked Syriza, making Tsipras blink and accept austerity measures just after a July 2015 national referendum voted 61% against accepting the EU diktat. The EU put a loaded gun to Syriza’s head: your banks will close and your people will starve and go homeless unless you accept the new deal, which ended up being even harsher than previous versions. Tsipras folded, somewhat predictably given his privileged background, and Greek society still has not recovered. I’ve said it a thousand different ways: we must slow the pace of our lives and Settle Down from the fast-lane, consumerist lifestyles; Rewild America to conserve land for future generations; Pay Attention to current events to protect us from totalitarianism, and develop a Planetary Vision for world peace and global cooperation on a multitude of transnational issues. There has to be a movement to lead a de-growth economy, followed up by a sustainable, steady-state system. It can be called socialist, progressive, anarchist, Green: but it has to work, and fast, or we are collectively going down the tubes. The system must be based around egalitarianism, direct democracy, along with drawing up a Green constitution based on Bolivia’s model. New amendments should be added to uphold and strictly enforce the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice should be given real power to prosecute violations of human rights. Implementing these measures would re-invigorate and re-enchant society to live healthier, happier lives, and promote the type of revolutionary optimism needed. We have to redefine progress as a world community I have a confession to make: most political journalism, even on the alternative media, bores me. The writers I value the most are the ones who educate about ecological issues and how they relate to structural poverty and misery for most of the world: Vandana Shiva, Robert Hunziker, Colin Todhunter. The environment and most of the developing world is in a state of collapse, and endless articles about Trump’s domestic agenda are not helpful as well as being out of touch; i.e., they are first world problems. There are plenty of voices speaking truth to power. The problem is, power has never, and will never listen without being threatened, as Alinsky was apt to point out.  That is why a mass protest movement is the best way forward. Fires must be lit under progressives and Leftists of all stripes: not just for free health care and free college tuition, but in solidarity with the poor and oppressed worldwide, as well as for threatened and endangered species. We must support a living wage for Zimbabweans and Chinese as well as for Americans, and healthy habitats for species in India and Borneo as well as American suburbs.  Progress can’t simply be measured in GDP or low unemployment rates: quality of life and ecosystem health must be taken into consideration. Taking Them by Surprise That’s not to say that winning an election isn’t worthwhile. If an electoral victory will seriously help your community, go for it. Yet, the Left should think deeply about how to go about this. If we are to beat The Powers That Be, we should use the element of surprise. This is why I’m in huge favor of what my friend and mentor Richard Oxman calls the TOSCA approach (Transforming Our State through Citizen Action). In this case, a truly radical candidate runs for office (say, mayor or governor) along with a citizen committee of a small number, say 10 or 12, ideally representing a wide swath of society in terms of ethnicity, gender, class, political beliefs, etc. All of the members must be non-career politicians; i.e., regular citizens. Emphasis will be placed on taking zero money from corporations, as well as the collective deadlines faced by society. The candidate explains throughout the campaign that she/he is only a figurehead candidate for the ballot, in order to get the citizen committee elected to power, and the committee will make all decisions involving legislation and authority as a group. All decisions are to be made in the open, not behind closed doors, in real time, with Q&A from the public, and an independent media outlet dedicated to transparent decision-making. This power-sharing agreement could ideally open up citizen’s minds and imaginations to the possibilities of democracy and help create a brighter, more sustainable, egalitarian future. The example set by such a group, the moral courage on display, could send reverberations worldwide. Zizek on Using Dupuy to Form an Anti-Nuclear Coalition There was recently a great piece by Slavoj Zizek regarding the US-North Korea standoff. Rather than assessing the “realistic” probabilities of nuclear war, Zizek claims we should use Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s theory of “Enlightened Catastrophism” to prevent a future conflagration. How this would work, then, is to accept the apocalypse as inevitable, yet still, in spite of this, to work to prevent what is already “pre-determined”. In a way, human societies always have been doing this, holding off the end times generation-to-generation, all the while cognizant of the possibility that an extinction event is possible at any time. In this case, it is obvious that asking the powers that be nicely to give up nukes using rational arguments won’t work: the elites are not going to concede anything without a fight. So, we should take Zizek’s advice seriously: What is needed is no less than a new global anti-nuclear movement, a global mobilization that would exert pressure on nuclear powers and act aggressively, organizing mass protests and boycotts, while denouncing our leaders as criminals and the like. It should focus not only on North Korea but also on those super-powers who assume the right to monopolize nuclear weapons. The very public mention of the use of nuclear weapons should be treated as a criminal offense. If this were done, it would be possible to link up protest movements worldwide, using the internet and social media, not just focusing on one-issue protests such as anti-nukes. We all share the threat of nuclear war in common, as well as the environmental threats posed by global warming, mass extinctions, ocean acidification, GMO outbreaks, pandemics, etc. Humanity must struggle together to overcome the daunting odds posed by an over-populated planet, mass poverty, and deteriorating ecosystems. In our information age, it is possible that we can bridge the gaps between nations and form a new internationalist, anti-capitalist movement. From all corners of the globe, we can build what Marcos called: …an intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism… in which distinct resistances may support one another. This network of resistance is not an organized structure; it doesn’t have a central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist. http://clubof.info/

[777wave]

It’s a long shot, but achievable. Let’s be positive and hope for the best in the Year 2021. One of the best articles ever written by a Filipino columnist in decades. It’s a “MUST READ FOR THOSE WHO WANTS REAL CHANGE.”

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The Philippines at 500, the Philippines 2021 : A Development Vision

By Felino "Jun" Palafox Jr. Published : April 24, 2013

On 2021, the Philippines will celebrate two monumental events: First, the country’s 500 year anniversary since the arrival of Magellan on March 16, 1521. Second, the introduction of Christianity by Spanish missionaries, and the onset of the Philippine Renaissance, brought by the growing young population, good governance, environmental sustainability, and economic stability that the country last enjoyed after World War II. We can bring the Philippines from the 20th century well into the 21st century.

To quote from the Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: But he that keeps the Law, happy is he.” We Filipinos possess all the ingredients of success in the world, but we have yet to achieve our full development potential as a country by developing a culture of integrity by addressing corruption (towards good governance), criminality (towards peace and order), and climate change (towards environmental sustainability). A socio-political, economic, urban/regional, cultural, spiritual and environmental renewal is now imperative. If we want to improve and uphold the quality of life in the Philippines, we who love our country should act as the pace-setters in the Philippines and make our country globally competitive.

As my professors at Harvard Graduate School of Design used to tell us, the 21st century will be a RE-century: Re-imagine, re-plan, re-design, re-use, reduce, recycle, redevelop towards an urban renaissance. We should be guided by the triple bottom-line approach to development: People First (Social Equity), Planet Earth (Environment), and then Profit (Economy). Now is the time to revitalize if the country is to undergo a reinvigoration and redevelop our country. The world is rapidly changing, and for the Philippines, things are looking up. Asian countries are now moving from global producers to global consumers as well. The Philippines is a country with unfulfilled high development potentials. The diversity that is the Philippines is a positive notion. It is the Brand of Asia, and it is in this diversity that we shall find unity. For leaders to succeed, they must marshal the resources in human intelligence and energy with principle in spirituality, ethics, and strength. We can all be empowered well into the 21st century.

With an optimistic outlook of a steady surging economy as a result of improved governance and political stability, the Philippines now has the chance to re-establish its once historic Asian seaport.

It has been predicted by leading economists that the Philippines, by 2021, is set to become the 21st largest economy in the Philippines. We already know the strengths of the Philippines as a nation, its history, and evolution of urbanization and planning. But what about its development visions by 2021?

While practicing our professions of architecture and urban planning, we want to bring our country to a first-world position by year 2021. We are talking here of sustainable developments and their positive effects on the environment, and how each project should enhance the quality of life in terms of comfort and neighborliness, income generation, and socio-economic and cultural activities in the local, regional, national, and international scenarios. Every project must elevate the international stature of Filipino professionals, be economically and financially viable, and enhance the environment for future generations.

We can do it. We can make our Philippines a great nation. The Philippines is number one in marine biodiversity, in seafarers and sailors, call centers, and maybe musicians. We are number two in Business Processing Outsourcing. We have the third largest coastline. Some countries go to war to claim more waterfront, or like Dubai, reclaimed the palm islands to increase their coastlines. We are fourth in the world in gold and shipbuilding, and fifth in all other mineral resources. We are number twelve in human resources, and the Filipino expatriates are the preferred employees elsewhere in the world. We are number one in Asia, second to Japan, from the 1930s to the 1970s. Asian countries voted Manila as having the highest development potential as a financial center for the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank.

For 300 years, the Philippines was the Asia-Pacific hub of Spanish Europe, 100 years of the Americans, four years of the Japanese, and two years of the British. The Philippines is 400 times the size of Singapore, 350 times the size of Hong Kong, eight times the size of Taiwan, and three times larger than South Korea—all very successful and globally competitive countries.

It’s about time that the Philippines’ image be metamorphosed from dusky squatters, archaic natives, and rice terraces, to an actively growing nation characterized by vertical and horizontal development.

Back in time for the future

Periodically, a country needs to take a step back, look beyond its immediate needs, and think about its long term future. We need to understand, as a country and community, the qualities that define a livable city and make sure that we develop a vision plan, a master plan that supports and enhances those qualities. But the real key to achieving greatness is just that—planning great things as future generations judge the plan by how well these plans were conceptualized and what is best for the Philippines tomorrow. We should step up and speed up from vision to concept, commitment, completion, and implementation. As the joint foreign chambers put up “ARANGKADA” (double time), let work faster to be globally competitive.

When I graduated, I constantly asked myself, or every year thereafter—where am I? Where do I want to go? How do I get there? Perhaps this quest to seek one’s own identity and sense of being is rooted in our lack of self-confidence on how great our nation could be.

Throughout human history, cities have made countries rich. Cities have provided the world’s great ideas and economic innovations. Indeed, the word cities both spring from the common root of civitas, a Latin word that reflected both citizenship and human settlements in ancient Rome. Cities are great magnets for the world’s best thinkers and innovators, and the proximity of roadways, rails, ports, and airports in urban areas reduce time, travel, and energy costs. Moreover, cities satisfy the universal need for face-to-face contact to foster new products, processes, and intellectual capital. The recipe of most successful cities, I have learned, is not just establishing good leadership, but must also have a long-term economic strategy, an immense institutional capacity, well-financed infrastructure, high-quality education, and a constant pursuit towards design excellence.

Renowned architect and planner Daniel Burnham (who planned Manila in 1905, then Baguio and Chicago in 1909), once commented that Manila was on the point of rapid growth, yet still small in area, possessing the bay of Naples, the winding river of Paris, and the canals of Venice, Manila has before it an opportunity unique in history of modern times, the opportunity to create a unified city equal to the greatest of the Western world, with unparalleled and priceless addition of a tropical setting.” It is unfortunate, however, that the Philippines copied cities like Hollywood and Los Angeles that are car-oriented cities. Had the Philippines developed the best practices in the world such as the cities of London, Paris, Venice, New York, Boston, and San Francisco, Manila would fit the title “City Beautiful of the Orient”, or as Burnham put it, “the Pearl of the Orient.”

However, the Laws of the Indies segregated people of various income classes—Intramuros or inside the walls for the ilustrados and principalia and Extramuros, outside the walls for the indios, sanglays, and peasants. After we became an independent republic, we disregarded the “City Beautiful” urban planning principle of Daniel Burnham, and the leaders of the government and industry copied erroneously the car-oriented Los Angeles of the 1950s and 1960s. Thus, places to live, work, shop, and dine and resulted to the long commutes of people or employees from their place of residence to their workplaces. Along with historic developments in Manila comes the rapid population growth significantly so because of the continuing influx of migrants from other provinces. Our capital, Manila, is a throbbing hub of commerce, tourism, and finance, bedecked with contemporary and architectural landmarks from the Spanish and American era. The empty lots and spaces in Manila have been filled out by informal settlers, who have moved to Manila in the hopes of finding a better living and future for their families. Among the major problems the city faced were flood problems and informal settlements. These problems have gotten worse at the turn of the century, posing great challenge to city officials and residents.

Metro Manila can be an urban laboratory for the mistakes made and lessons to be learned in urban planning and real estate development. Its Asian, European, and American heritage in a developing country setting makes it uniquely different. Some of the best practices elsewhere in the world can be appropriately applied to address the country’s urban issues and challenges and to make metropolitan Manila more livable and globally competitive.

Trailblazers shaping future cities

When I wrote an article on how the urban development should be like in the 21st Century, I listed down some of the questions that I wanted architects and planners should try to answer, among them, “What will our cities be like? What are the dominant forces shaping the city of tomorrow? What are the implications of the built environment? What is the impact of our outdated and obsolete practices in planning, zoning, deed restrictions, building codes? What measures will be taken to address the ‘uglification’ of our cities – air, water, garbage, visual pollution and traffic congestion? What will be the prevailing architectural styles? Architecture with a strong sense of place, or architecture of ‘everywhere, nowhere, anywhere or elsewhere?’ What best practices elsewhere in the world can we take lessons from?”

The vision plan 2021 puts forward a strategy which takes advantage of the locational advantage nationally and globally. Part of the plan is the development of, among others, urban development corridors and clustering of major cities to urban growth centers as counter magnets to Metro Manila. This will spur new investments nationwide in the regions and redevelopment opportunities in the other cities creating jobs and economic opportunities especially for the urban poor in the provinces. A Manila Megalopolis 2020 vision that I put forward in my Harvard term paper back in 2003 showed how the Philippines can create ‘pockets of efficiencies’ and strong regional economic activity by connecting major transportation nodes so that the Metro Manila congestion can decrease rural immigration to the already congested Metro Manila.

Philippines at 500

Hopefully, the country, before its 500th anniversary, will achieve its aims to enhance the economic opportunity and provide a strong social support structure for people throughout the country. Opportunity means not only good jobs at every skill level, but also a good place to raise a family, participate in community affairs, and enjoy recreational and educational opportunities. Therefore, as a nation we must work twice as hard to achieve our development goals. We must strive to reach the global benchmarks to be worthy of the respect we must have for ourselves as well as from other countries.

We can all help together in bringing the Philippines from the 20th century into the 21st century to be number 21 in the world’s top economies by 2021, when our country celebrates its 500 years. For a renaissance to happen, all of us, Filipinos and residents of the Philippines should be open to new ideas that are creative, innovative and artistic, progressive and effective, short-term and opportunistic as well as long-term and visionary that must follow this new age of constant change.

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Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr. FUAP, PIEP, APEC Architect, Harvard GSD and International Associate AIA, APA, CTBUH

He is the Principal Architect - Urban Planner, Managing Partner and Founder of Palafox Associates, which he founded in 1989. He served as former President of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) in 2011, the first Architect to do so. He is also the president of the Philippine Institute of Environmental Planners (PIEP) for 2013 and 2014.

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Photo credit : Palaflox Architecture