In order for any data to be open you need to be able to download the data so that you can remix, reuse and share the data. Data and the government agency that supplies it are not transparent if you can’t download the raw data. PDF’s and web services don’t count. They can be useful additions to the raw data, but they are not a replacements.

2)  Idiotically the Canadian government is planning to stop collecting detailed census data.  As the Toronto Globe and Mail explains:

For the first time in 35 years, the census will not feature a detailed, long form that Canadians are obliged to send back to the government.

Users of census information, including myself, are not happy and somewhat puzzled as to why this decision was made.

3) Historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s new book  Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, describes how politically connected scientists have operated effective campaigns to skew public opinion towards the denial of well-established scientific knowledge over four decades, now has a website – merchantsofdoubt.org – that links to a bunch of the documents supporting the books arguemnet. I linked to a lecture based on the book earlier this year, and they recently wrote an article based on their book for Yale360 Global Warming Deniers and Their Proven Strategy of Doubt.

Related posts:

1. Naomi Oreskes on Merchants of Doubt
2. Short Links: Networks, Amazonian historical ecology, and development data
3. Short Links: Climate change economics and impacts, dealing with data, and analyzing social networks

Change in P. falciparum malaria endemicity between 1900 and 2007. Negative values denote a reduction in endemicity, positive values an increase.

From looking at these changes and their causes they find that:

1) widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent.

2) the proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures.

Predictions of an intensification of malaria in a warmer world, based on extrapolated empirical relationships or biological mechanisms, must be set against a context of a century of warming that has seen marked global declines in the disease and a substantial weakening of the global correlation between malaria endemicity and climate.

SciDev.net has a news article that includes some responses from critics of the study.

Related posts:

1. Global and National Malaria Maps
2. Dead Ahead: Similar Early Warning Signals of Change in Climate, Ecosystems, Financial Markets, Human Health
3. The non-suprising dynamics of climate change

Volcano eruption is certainly one, but which are other possible global surprises? In 1994, the Aspen Global Change Institute organized a two week workshop on global environmental surprise. The results from this workshop can be found in Stephen H. Schneider and colleagues 1998 article “Imaginable surprise in global change science” (Journal of Risk Research, 1(2)). By “imaginable surprise”, they mean

The event, process, or outcome departs from the expectations of the observing community or those affected by the event or process. Seen from this point of view, surprise abou t one or another aspect of climate change is an after-the-fact reaction to an observation or new scientiŽfic fiŽnding that, in some sense, lies outside our range of expectations.

In the list of 40+ types of surprises, you find not only volcano eruption, but also, just to mention a few:

Don’t say you weren’t warned….

Related posts:

1. Resilience networks in global environmental change science
2. El Nino, Global Warming, and Anomalous North American Winter Warmth
3. Tapping into the Collective Intelligence of the Global Environmental Change Community

From Stefan Rahmstorf’s commentary A new view on sea level rise in Nature Reports Climate Change , 44 – 45 (doi:10.1038/climate.2010.29)

Estimates for twenty-first century sea level rise from semi-empirical models2, 8, 16, 17, 18 as compared to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)1. For exact definitions of the time periods and emissions scenarios considered, see the original references.

Related posts:

1. Mapping Sea Level Rise
2. Future Oceans: Warming Up, Rising High, Turning Sour
3. Re-Orient: world economic production in MA scenarios

Humans exist within social-ecological systems.The climate story is one of processes and connections. Critical planetary systems – climate, nitrogen, biodiversity – are impaired by human activities (see Rockström et al.). Both the power of human influence on natural systems and the vulnerability of human dependence on natural systems inspire awe – and, for some, doubt.

Uncertainties are central to social-ecological experience.
Impairments of planetary systems are historical experiments that are run but once. In linked social-ecological systems, knowledge is probabilistic. A very high confidence characterizes the analysis of human impact on the climate system, according to the typologies of uncertainty and confidence developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see IPCC – pdf). Uncertainty becomes central (see Post-Normal Science). The more the climate is changed, the less confident we can be about how it might further change (see Easterbrook).

Knowledge of facts presupposes knowledge of values.
The very-high-confidence fact of human impact on the climate system is not prescriptive in and of itself. To derive knowledge, to gain a capacity for effective action, depends on competing and complimentary values and perceptions, including: worldviews of nature as benign, tolerant and/or ephemeral (see cultural theory); aspirations of economic growth and/or human development; senses of personal and/or collective identity (see identity tree); and awareness of agency, i.e. that one has free will, that one can be effective, that risks can be recognized and evaluated.

In another post on cultural theory (the Douglas and Thompson version) Silverman expands on climate and cultural theory:

With positions on climate hardening, references to contradictory worldviews are popping up in the mainstream media (See NYT and NPR), but the story itself is hardly new.  “Underlying much of the energy debate is a tacit, implicit divergence on what the energy problem ‘really’ is,” wrote Amory Lovins in 1977’s Soft Energy Paths. “Public discourse suffers because our society has mechanisms only for resolving conflicting interests, not conflicting views of reality, so we seldom notice that these perceptions differ markedly.”

Here is a cultural theory-based interpretation of climate worldviews:

• The hierarchist’s story (nature perverse/tolerant): International protocols and national commitments are needed to address the tragedy of the atmospheric commons and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• The egalitarian’s story (nature ephemeral): The underlying problem is consumption (resource throughput). Precaution, lifestyle simplicity and grass roots action are the most effective responses.
• The individualist’s story (nature benign): To address climate change, rely on laissez-faire markets to spur competition and innovation. The benefits of climate change may even balance out the costs.
• The fatalist’s story (nature capricious): Natural forces are beyond human understanding, much less human influence.

A fifth worldview, called “nature resilient” (Thompson, Ellis & Wildavsky 1990) or “nature evolving” (Holling, Gunderson & Ludwig 2002) is sometimes pictured at the central intersection of the axes, overlapping each of the others – we might say, in the language of psychologist Ken Wilber, transcending and including each of the others.

Related posts:

1. Climate change, smoking, and gaming mental models
2. Uncertainty and climate change
3. Should climate change research be 90 percent social science?

RH: I was reading a piece of yours yesterday where you wrote “some elements of society are inherently vulnerable, and others are inherently resilient.” What is it that determines the degree to which things are vulnerable or resilient?

NA: First of all both vulnerability and resilience need a referent, so we need to be vulnerable to something, or resilient to something. I think the things that parts of society are vulnerable to are environmental change at the large scale, and the changes in the way the world and society works, which you can capture in the idea of globalisation. Some parts of society are, in effect, vulnerable to the large scale structural changes that are happening around the world – the changes in the flows of capital and labour and the restrictions on those, and the impact that that has on their life and livelihoods.

So if you think about the farming sector, it’s vulnerable to large scale price shocks, and we as consumers are vulnerable to large scale price shocks around the world. Some parts of society are vulnerable to environmental change and in combination are vulnerable to the sorts of things that are going on in terms of economic globalisation around the world. Others are more resilient. But being resilient to the forces of globalisation doesn’t necessarily mean that those parts of society are immune to them or even aren’t integrated into them.

I don’t think you can simply isolate yourself from the globalised world and say, “well, that’ll make us more resilient”. It’ll make us more resilient in some senses, but the world is as it is and I think we just need to deal with the fact that it’s more globally integrated and look on the positive side of that and reap the benefits of it.

Would you not have any truck with the idea that a resilient society is one where local economies are stronger?

I don’t disagree with that. What I’m saying is that local economies, for all sorts of reasons, are actually stronger and likely to be more resilient, because if we go back to the definition, they have more autonomy and room for self organisation and adaptability and change. Hence, I think it’s impossible to isolate a community or society from a globalised world.

Simply looking to give more autonomy to a community is a positive thing, but trying to isolate it from the rest of the world and not realise that we’re globalised and all the rest of it isn’t a sensible thing to do. As I say, there are a lot of benefits to globalisation (not necessarily economic globalisation) such as the flow of information around the world, global solidarity with places in other parts of the world. There are all sorts of up sides to globalisation. I’m sure you’re familiar with all those arguments and you know this on the ground.

…

What does local government, if it’s optimally designed to facilitate resilience, look like? Part of the stuff I’m doing is looking at Totnes as a case study and at the moment we have this three tiers – town council, county council, district council – and trying to get a sense of what a shift in local government would look like if it actually were designed to really support transition and resilience? I suppose, from the resilience perspective, there’s the short term, emergency planning type stuff, and then there’s the longer term resilience building. But I wonder what your thoughts are on the qualities local government would have or how it would operate if that was its intention?

It’s interesting that resilience is part of the remit of local government, at least in the UK. But a lot of that comes from the Civil Contingencies Act and there are regional Resilience Forums and the like. There is also Scottish Resilience, part of the Scottish Executive, which on the face of it sound absolutely fantastic, but actually they have a very specific and rather narrow remit to deal with emergency management and emergency planning.

Perhaps resilience is a more publicly acceptable word that assumes proactive government and is slightly less scary than ‘emergency management’ or ‘dealing with crisis’. But that’s a start. It’s good that there’s a lexicon and ideas of resilience are within local government, even if they’re narrowly defined at the minute. In terms of overall principles in how local government can facilitate resilience, I don’t have anything very specific, but a couple of things I would say: I think local government needs to be able to identify, in terms of responsibility, who, where and what the vulnerabilities are in the system because that’s what collective action and what governments are for. One of their primary roles of government is to protect its vulnerable citizens. And so, to make sure that processes don’t leave parts of communities or places behind, and actually make them more vulnerable to change I think is a first step.

The second thing is that I don’t there’s any such thing as an optimal government to promote resilience, but clearly they need to be able to promote flexibility. Of the key parameters of that are two things: one is to let civil society flourish and to provide the resources that allow civil society groups to flourish within a local region. A second principle is to have the democratic accountability and open forums and new ways of gathering information that allows government itself to take on board new ideas.

It seems that there’s never any shortage of ideas of what can promote resilience but, without sounding too vague about this, it’s actually about democratic structures but also the synergistic relationship between civil society and government at all levels but local government level as well. Governments need to promote social capital and promotes social learning between civil society and government. That all sounds very at the principle level but I don’t think I’ll go beyond that at this point.

Well it certainly goes beyond the Civil Contingencies Act which actually is about suspending the rule of law – it’s quite a scary piece of legislation when you read it.

Yes. But nevertheless I do see a glimmer there – the idea of flexibility and resilience are at least within the remit of what the responsibility of governments and even local governments might be. There may be ways for those ideas around short term emergencies to say actually, ‘we need to address some longer more structural crises’. In those circumstances the language and the ideas of resilience are actually something that could be taken forward.

Is there not a danger with resilience that it could actually, in the wrong hands, be used as a concept for unpleasant things that fly in the opposite direction of a social justice agenda? Could one also distinguish a healthy resilience or an unhealthy take on resilience? I’m thinking of the DEMOS report, Resilient Nation, which actually….if we say it’s about being resilient to terrorism and pandemics then the approaches that we put in place are very different from when we’re talking about resilience to climate change and peak oil.

Yes. Now clearly, all these terms, even sustainability can be used in broad senses for example, to sustain your transnational corporation is a sustainability goal for those organisations. I don’t think any intellectual community can define resilience and capture it and say, “this is what resilience is”. I’m a little bit more sanguine about this. I think even the national security strategy from the Cabinet Office and other documents – the IPPR’s National Security in the Twenty First Century adopts a lot of the language of resilience and this is a positive development.

But I think that’s actually a platform for debate of what resilience actually means. In a lot of that language and in a lot of those debates and the issues that are being applied to, is an engineering view of resilience. It’s more actually about robustness – let’s make critical national infrastructure like our power stations be able to stay the same. But I don’t think that takes on board the work over the last twenty years that refines resilience, and looks at the distinction between resilience and robustness, i.e. the ability to (change vs. the ability to stay the same). I think that actually opens up space for direct intellectual debate about

a) what we mean by resilience and
b) what it is that we have at the minute that we want to stay the same and what it is that we have at the minute that we want to change.

I wouldn’t agree with you Rob about healthy and unhealthy resilience. I think having resilience in the public domain in terms of the goals of public policy is just a good thing in general, even if much of the community doesn’t agree with the terminology being used.

How might we measure resilience at a community level?

Resilience – it’s difficult to measure directly because it is an emergent property of a system, if we’re into the positivist view of what resilience is. We know from the ecological literature that there are various determinants that make an eco system resilient in terms of its abilities to retain its stability domain and either its singular or multiple equilibrium state, and you can measure that by looking at the populations and the interactions between the interactions within an ecological system and characteristics that tend to make ecological systems include things like diversity – diversity of species, diversity or eco system function within an eco system and that sort of thing.

So it’s a challenge then to say, “do those same characteristics that you can measure in an ecological system translate into a social system?” I would say you could take those analogies so far because societies tend to have other characteristics than eco systems, and clearly for communities I think some of those things still hold. The structural equivalent of eco system function are things like diversity of skills, diversity of values within communities and those sort of things and those can be measured. You can see parallels between eco system resilience and social system resilience.

I think it also measures the autonomy of an economy or a community, in other words its ability to have some say or have some voice over it – all those things are parallel to how we’d measure eco system resilience as well as social resilience. Let me say two things: first of all you need to be able to look at both together. Clearly we’re all dependant on the ecosystems in which we sit and our global interdependencies with those, so the key research challenge for which I don’t think we’ve got an answer at the moment is how do you measure the resilience of a socio-ecological system, the combination of the two. Secondly of course is that resilience is a relative concept. It’s not something you can observe directly but you can show that something can become more resilient over time or more or less resilient compared to other referent cases. So it’s a complex area: it isn’t something that there’ll be a set of Newtonian laws for.

Related posts:

1. Transition Towns and Resilience Thinking
2. Transition Towns – resilience indicators & upcoming conferences
3. Critical Reflections on resilience thinking in the Transition Movement

Below is a related 2007 talk of her’s from the University of California The American Denial of Global Warming, that provides more details on environmental denial.

Related posts:

1. short links: open data, candian census, and merchants of doubt
2. Paul Krugman on Betraying the Planet
3. Uncertainty and climate change

Does resilience thinking have any impact at all on the ground? These two very interesting examples came in via Lorena Franco Vidal at the NGO Fundación Humedales de Colombia. In January of this year, the mentioned NGO decided to initiate a climate vulnerability and resilience assessment of the Fúquene wetland complex in the east of the Colombian Andes (2,600 meters over the sea level).

According to Lorena, this work has been very much inspired by a range of publications on “the problem of fit” – that is when the dynamics of complex social-ecological systems isn’t matched by institutions and governance [e.g. Cummings et al 2006, Galaz et al 2008], as well as the Resilience Alliance workbook for scientists. In addition, the evaluation of biochemichal variables (in bottom and water sediments of the lake) are – inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s work – done by the fishermen community of the wetland. According to Lorena, this group of local stakeholders have been training monitoring for 2 years to be able to follow environmental change in the lake system.

But there is more. During 2008 and 2009, papers on “the problem of fit” as well as David Salt’s and Brian Walker’s book “Resilience Thinking”, inspired a suggested reframing of Colombian biodiversity policy towards an increased emphasis on social-ecological systems, and the need to address multilevel interactions in governance. Results of the suggested modification include, amongst other things: i) a new conceptual framework for biodiversity management, based upon the resilience thinking paradigm applied to socio-ecological systems; ii) a model that accounts for the various stability domains in which natural and social systems appear in the territory; and iii) a revision of the state – pressure – response model, in order to include new drivers of change affecting biodiversity.

The outcomes of this latter “update”, are now being used for systematic country-side consultations, and we look forward to hear more from both these initiatives!

Related posts:

1. Machine Fetishism, Money and Resilience Theory
2. Resilience Surrogates: a special feature in Ecosystems
3. Special Issue Online: The Politics of Resilience

Paskal convincingly argues that short-sighted domestic and foreign policies are already eroding “the West’s position in the global balance of power”. Exhibit A is the Arctic, where the US and EU are pushing for ‘global governance’ of the still-frozen Northwest Passage, a route expected to become a prized shipping channel to Asia and Europe with continued warming.
As melting Arctic sea ice opens a shipping channel through the Northwest Passage, China and Russia could forge economic ties to Canada and win major gains in trade.
Canada currently claims the Northwest Passage as part of its territorial waters, but this assertion is being contested by the US and European Union, which want it recognized as an international strait so that they can have unfettered access for their own commercial interests, such as oil and gas exploration. This standoff, Paskal suggests, could prod Canada to explore a strategic relationship with Russia, which has its own designs on the Arctic. Meanwhile, China is knocking at Canada’s door, eager to purchase a slice of the country’s abundant natural resources. In a ’stateless’ Northwest Passage, Russia and China could end up being the big players, especially if they forge stronger economic ties to Canada. This potential development, Paskal argues, poses a long-term security risk to the EU and US.

To understand why the Northwest Passage looms large in global geopolitics, one need only look to China, which has built up a trading and shipping network through state-controlled companies that now manage such chokepoints as the Panama Canal. As Paskal explains, these chokepoints, where a wide flow of traffic is forced through a narrow alley, “are the sorts of things empires go to war over”. The Strait of Hormuz, which leads to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, is a natural chokepoint. Others, such as the Panama Canal, are man-made. “The melting Arctic sea ice creates new chokepoints of global strategic importance,” asserts Paskal, cautioning those who minimize the Northwest Passage as a Canadian issue, “It is about as much of a Canadian issue as the Suez Canal is simply an Egyptian issue.”

Chinese chess

The melding of realpolitik and international relations with climate change is what makes Global Warring deserving of attention. Paskal spends much of the book walking the reader through the projected impacts of climate change — but in the context of countries manoeuvring for advantage in a world where imminent and drastic environmental change is taken for granted.

At the same time the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the prospect of a navigable Arctic has lead the Chinese government to fund more polar research.  The Financial Times writes in Exploring the openings created by Arctic melting.

“Because China’s economy is reliant on foreign trade, there are substantial commercial implications if shipping routes are shortened during the summer months each year,” the report said. It added that taking the northern route through an ice-free Arctic could shorten the trip from Shanghai to Hamburg by 6,400km compared with sailing through the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal. In addition, piracy-induced high insurance costs could be avoided.

Related posts:

1. Social Implications of Arctic Melting
2. A transforming Arctic
3. Methane in the Arctic

Google and renewable energy? Hackers, deforestation and carbon emission rights? This might sound like an odd mix of events, but something is definitely in pipeline. Global environmental change and rapid information technological change have for a long time been viewed as parallel, and decoupled global phenomena. A number of events in the last month indicate that this is likely to change. Just consider the following events:

GoodMorning! Full Render #2 from blprnt on Vimeo.

Internet giant Google recently got an approval in the US, to buy and sell energy. This happens after the company’s explicit ambition to become one of the major players in renewable energy. According to the New York Times: “The company’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl said the company was fully committed to accelerating the development of renewable energy technologies that can prove more cost-effective than coal power, as a means of both curbing carbon emissions and trimming its own giant energy bill”.

In addition, computer hackers seem to have found a new pool of resources to steal from – emissions trading. As reported by Wired recently, hackers have been successful in stealing millions of dollars by launching “a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority”. A similar attack was assumed in Brazil in December 2008 when hackers managed to get in to the government logging databases. The impacts? Illegal harvest of 1.7 million cubic meters of timber, according to Wired.

One final example is of course the ongoing bashing of the IPCC, and the now infamous e-mail hack of UK climate scientists. An interesting follow up is this op-ed in The Australian, arguing that the Internet is allowing climate change skeptics to gain traction. One of the more thought-provoking quotes from the article states:

The `climate consensus’ may hold the establishment — the universities, the media, big business, government — but it is losing the jungles of the web. After all, getting research grants, doing pieces to camera and advising boards takes time. The very ostracism the sceptics suffered has left them free to do their digging untroubled by grant applications and invitations to Stockholm.

See also John Bruno of climateshifts.org, who asks “Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying?”.

Are moving into an era of cyber-environmental politics? I’m pretty sure that we are.

Related posts:

1. Satellites, Google and the Politics of CO2-Monitoring
2. Transition Towns and Resilience Thinking
3. Using the internet to provide early warning of ecological change

I have reported before on this blog about a bunch of sociologist in the COMPON study, which is a good example of how social science can engage in bringing understanding on cross-scale linkages. The study was recently commented upon in Nature.

COMPON (Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks) is coordinated by the tireless Jeffrey Broadbent from University of Minnesota, that together with researchers in 15 countries is pulling of this big reserach effort. Among these we have centre reseracher Christofer Edling and Stockholm University sociologist Marcus Carson.

In an interview with Stockholm University Marcus Carson says that by pairing social network analysis with interviews and document analysis, the COMPON project aims to:

… gather data from organizations such as environmental NGOs, conservative think tanks, human-rights groups, political organizations and so on and get a better understanding of what shapes and motivates their actions.

[These actors, and humans in general] use conceptual models to make sense of the information, but these models include not only what is happening and how, but what kinds of actions should be taken and who to trust for information. Sociological research helps us clarify how these models are constructed and how they are promoted among different groups in society. A better understanding of these factors improves our chances of developing policies that support long-term sustainability.

On their homepage, COMPON writes (and see their blog):

The project [...] studying the factors that account for cross-national variation in efforts to mitigate climate change. This variation arises from difference in the interaction process between ways of thinking (discourse) and ways of acting (coalitions) in national cases. The COMPON project currently has teams in over 15 societies (developed, developing, and transitional) and at the international level collecting equivalent empirical data on these processes using content analysis, interview, and inter-organizational network survey.

Related posts:

1. Why do some countries adopt the Kyoto protocal and IPCC recommendations earlier than others?
2. Postdoctoral research opportunity in Climate Change Adaptation
3. Mental models and climate change

1) Alex Steffen on De-Industrializing the City

One of my favorite quotes by Bjarke Ingels:

“Engineering without engines. We should use contemporary technology and computation capacity to make our buildings independent of machinery. Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life. Therefore we pump air around, illuminate dark spaces with electric lights, and heat and cool the spaces in order to make them livable. The result is boring boxes with big energy bills. If we moved the qualities out of the machine room and back into architecture’s inherent attributes, we’d make more interesting buildings and more sustainable cities.”

These are all ideas very much at the core of green building, but there’s a focus here that I think is important: that sustainable cities involve removing machines designed to do ecologically stupid things, and that new technology should reorient the city around the human body.

2) Jay Walljasper writes about His Favorite Neighborhood

Last year Project for Public Spaces and I published the Great Neighborhood Book, which offers hundreds of ideas from around the world about making community improvements on issues ranging from crime prevention to environmental restoration. Since then almost everyone I meet asks: What’s your favorite neighborhood?

3) Sarah Kuck writing about a new NRDC report that claims Walkable Neighborhoods Key to Stable Real Estate:

Looking at data from more than 40,000 mortgages throughout Chicago, San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla., the researchers behind the Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default report found that the rate of mortgage foreclosure actually decreased in neighborhoods that were more compact, walkable and connected to public transportation (after accounting for important factors like income).

4) and Climate Plan Must Include Walkable Urbanism

Without directing future development toward walkable urbanism, the climate impacts of sprawl will overwhelm other efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, said Robert Cervero, a professor specializing in transportation and land use policy at UC Berkeley. “Urban development patterns have a significant role to play in carbon reduction,” Cervero told the audience. “Otherwise we’ll just get knocked back by land-use patterns. Sustainable urbanism has to be part of the equation.”

The benefits of walkable development extend far beyond the efficiencies of trains, buses, and bikes compared to cars. …

Cervero attached some rough numbers to these “embedded energy savings.” While transit investment alone can achieve a 10 to 20 percent reduction in America’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions, he said, factoring in the embedded energy savings of walkable development boosts that figure to 30 percent. That’s 30 percent compared to present-day emissions levels. The reduction could reach as high as 60 percent, Cervero added, compared to the level of per-capita emissions that would result from continuing business-as-usual sprawl-inducing policies.

Related posts:

1. Why green building has spread
2. Building Transformation: CO2 emissions and change
3. Well-Being vs. Wealth (2) – Natural Capital