by Alex Steffen

Here's the reality: we in the U.S., Canada, Australia and (to a lesser extent) Europe need to move very quickly to make deep cuts in our climate emissions if we hope for any chance of making big enough global cuts to avoid generating catastrophic global warming. In other words, we need radical change if we want to avoid cooking the planet.

Here's the political reality: those who benefit from, or depend upon, the status quo are going to fight dirty against any meaningful change. They will see radical change as a mortal threat. In practice, this means that the carbon industries (especially coal), wealthy suburbanites (whose lifestyles, jobs and investments are most likely to generate extremely large carbon footprints) and conservative extremists (whose market fundamentalism finds itself at odds with the reality-based community) will be in the future, as now, the sworn enemies of intelligent change (or, as they would have it, "skeptics"). We aren't going to change that, for reasons that are deeply entrenched in our societies, and these are extremely powerful interests, with the ability to at least slow real national progress.

For generations, city dwellers have led social revolutions, going to the barricades to fight injustice and force change on the unwilling powerful. Cities are ungovernable from the barricades -- one can't live in a permanent revolution -- but that does not mean the barricades have no use. And, today, we urbanites find ourselves in a situation where business as usual is unacceptable. Perhaps the time has come to raise over the barricades of sustainable design, innovation, policy and business a new black flag: urban climate neutrality.

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ALEX STEFFEN
Executive Editor
Worldchanging

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