Here in the US, implementing these types of policies seems mostly like a political pipedream at the moment. I could imagine a really smart developer doing this as a marketing scheme, maybe. maybe. But this is a great article that gives us a window into some things that are being tried in Europe (although, I also hear voices in Europe speaking longingly of the perceived lack of regulation in the US). I don’t know – our regulations may be equally strong or stronger in some areas like hydrology and water quality (which is missing from the framework discussed here btw) wetland and floodplain protection, and endangered species (although these are under constant political threat). Ideally in my view, species would not have to get endangered first before we will do anything for them.
As part of the actions to fight biodiversity loss, the European Union is working on a restoration regulation demanding the principle of no net loss (NNL) state of biodiversity of urban green space. Applying this principle in urban planning may raise conflicts between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision. Furthermore, integrating the NNL of biodiversity principle into urban planning cannot be isolated from existing planning tools or processes. Here we present a novel approach where the green area factor tool and biodiversity offsetting are integrated to achieve NNL of biodiversity in urban planning, while maintaining the necessary ecosystem services and avoiding the negative, unintended tradeoffs that may occur if only one of these tools is used in the planning process. We provide a model which combines the two approaches to create a holistic method to understand and govern both biodiversity and ecosystem services of urban greenery. The model is intended to be used as part of urban planning processes.
As we and others have said before, from a physics perspective, resources are low-entropy materials (Georgescu-Roegen 1971). The entropy law holds that systems tend towards higher entropy states spontaneously. Living systems, as non-equilibrium systems, need to extract low-entropy materials from the environment to compensate for their continuous dissipation.
We are taking concentrated resources from the Earth’s biophysical system, using them to perform useful work, and producing waste products which consist of less concentrated substances and heat which are too diffuse to use for useful work, and in many cases cause harm to the system. Entropy must increase at the scale of the universe, but organized systems like life and human civilization can get away with decreasing it on scales that matter to us short-lived primates, if not to a dark, cold universe that most likely doesn’t care about us (revealing my atheist stripes here, sure if you are religious that helps to solve this existential dread problem, and good for you!) There is a scale where the impact of our human economy becomes large relative to the physical system it is embedded in, and the economic theories we have based critical decisions on have chosen to neglect that to this point. Economists might say, our equations can account for that, we have just chosen to neglect it and we have clearly stated our assumptions. Well, those assumptions no longer hold as we approach or pass the point of no return.
Many others have made these points. In addition to Georgescu-Roegen – a few that come to my mind are Herman Daly, Howard Odum, Brian Czech, Jay Forrester and the authors of World3, to name a few. But these voices have been ignored by mainstream economists because they were from other disciplines, did not have the right credentials, or did not make their arguments at a time when the prevailing body of thought was receptive. So it probably helps to have one more credentialed academic economist make them for the audience of academic and professional economists at this particular point in history. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s professionals. Economists are very, very important. For better or worse, their opinions and choices and advice to policy makers shape our world. Maybe at a time when the public has become less receptive to these ideas even though the crisis has rapidly worsened, the economics profession could be ready to listen. I don’t know, but it’s worth another try.
While there is a propaganda shield between news coverage of the global climate emergency and those of us absorbing news here in the US, the American Meteorological Society bravely continues to publish their annual State of the Climate report. I think “absorbing” is the right word because, while accurate news sources are not actually censored and are out there to be sought out, if you are just getting your news from headlines and sound bites and passing a monitor in an airport, you’re getting the impression that the ongoing collapse of our world’s biophysical life support system is not a front and center concern.
Anyway, I think of this report as sort of the interim annual report between whenever the IPCC gets around to their major releases. Here are some quick highlights:
Atmospheric CO2 stands at 423 ppm. This is the highest ever, it is growing each year and it is growing at the fastest rate recorded since the 1960s. So the world is not only turning the corner, it is not decelerating toward turning the corner. It is accelerating.
Record heat. Record drought. Record ocean heat. Record polar heat, ocean ice and glacier loss.
Record sea level. Well, this is not surprising because the trend is up, and this one I wouldn’t expect to fluctuate so much year to year. The summary in the article I linked to doesn’t say whether there is evidence of unexpected acceleration. But with all that ice melt, there is a mass balance situation here…
So it’s bad bad bad, dad. I don’t know how else you can spin this other than to say it’s important to put one year in the context of longer-term trends. But the long-term trends are all bad. And if we are hitting unexpected records, that suggests that the projections (which are bad) may not be bad enough. Increasingly it looks like the world may be at that tipping point – it will be called in retrospect rather than definitively in the moment, but it might be now. 2025 will be a nice round year to put in the history books.
This is a short Wikipedia article about defining and mapping the historical or potential natural vegetation of areas that have been developed or otherwise altered by humans. Sure, there is plenty of scientific debate about the concept but it seems to me like it could be adapted for practical purposes. Even in the U.S., we have ordinances in most places requiring maintenance or restoration of something approaching natural hydrology on development sites (I’m not saying implementation of this concept is remotely perfect either, just that it is widespread and more or less accepted). But we don’t have anything approaching that for ecology, and you can restore hydrology without restoring an ecosystem (for example, with a storage and infiltration tank under a parking lot). So if you have a model of what the original or potential natural vegetation of a place is, you should be able to quantify what percentage of that is being destroyed, preserved, or restored by a given project.
This is just some natural(ish) vegetation. I’m just trying to make the site more visually interesting, okay? Thank you Indiana Jo for posting on Wikimedia.
This (paywalled) Financial Times article has eye-popping pictures of French towns built in the 1200s and 1300s. Many of these still exist and are going strong today, and people love them. They were small (around a thousand people) and densely populated. They were generally built around a public square with a weekly market. At the time, the article says, feudal lords created the towns as a way of concentrating, controlling, and taxing people, in exchange for greater safety and quality of life. The feudal lord generally owned the commercial and industrial real estate, of course, but the article says this can be a model for development corporations today, with master planning and long-term ownership of business districts. Housing developers in theory can do their short-term thing but pay into these development corporations which are then set up in perpetuity to operate and maintain the commons. Sounds good in theory. Clearly the private markets don’t create the kind of green spaces, schools, etc. that people say they want but then vote against with their actual dollars and housing and transportation choices.
This paper identifies a number of “positive tipping points” on climate change that can help counteract the risk of reaching negative tipping points such as glacier melting and methane release. They identify the shift to solar and wind power, electric vehicles, and heat pumps for heating and cooling buildings. These seem very market- and consumer-driven to me. So these are feedback loops that have been gathering some steam, and maybe governments can do relatively small things to reinforce them in the hopes of getting them to a takeoff point where they are self-sustaining and able to counteract the negative feedback loops that are out there. It is somewhat heartening to realize that the renewable energy and electric vehicle revolutions are farther along outside the US than inside, and we are not getting this impression I believe because of effective oil and gas industry propaganda here. Because those companies and their lobbyists understand these positive feedback loops too, and they are evil or at least amoral in the pursuit of short term profit at the long term expense of human civilization on Earth.
From what I understand (outside this article), adoption of heat pumps and building electrification is farther along in the U.S. than elsewhere. This is interesting – how did we manage to move away from heating buildings with coal, oil, and gas directly decades ago if this decreased the profits of the all-powerful fossil fuel industry? Were they just asleep at the switch, or were the economic incentives just that strong? Is it because we made the choice to fund electric infrastructure through a decentralized, regulated electric utility industry? And once we built that infrastructure, the economic incentives became too strong to resist. Whereas we have not built the infrastructure to support the electric vehicle transition, and the fossil fuel/automobile/highway construction industry is successfully fighting that tooth and nail through propaganda and (legalized, by our corrupt Supreme Court) political corruption. (Remember that currently, highway construction has dedicated funding from gas taxes. And auto dealerships make more money from servicing and repairing fossil fuel powered vehicles than they do from selling them.)
Note the oil and gas industry could have been decentralized and regulated too, that is just not the path we went down a century or so ago. It’s too late for this, but economic incentives are going to push in the direction of building the charging infrastructure, because it is just a better, cleaner, and cheaper way to get around overall. So by pushing for this policy, however strongly and effectively the forces of darkness have been pushing against it lately, we are working to reinforce a positive feedback loop that can eventually tip and become irreversible.
I know, a lot of electricity is still generated with fossil fuels at this point. It is still more efficient from what I understand. And slowly but surely, renewables are chipping away. Add modernized nuclear technology to this mix, like the small modular reactors, and keep pushing toward that longer-term dream of fusion power.
We kind of knew this would happen. IVF has been around and is getting more common, although it’s still expensive. We’re told DNA sequencing means people using IVF can select embryos to reduce the probability of genetic diseases. So far so good. Basic research exists tying genes to traits other than susceptibility to disease, like intelligence and eye color. So it was inevitable that companies would arise offering to let people select embryos tied to these traits, right? And that has now happened. Here is a long rundown of where the state of this industry stands.
The biggest concern, which I share, is that rich people will be able to afford this and nobody else will, so rich people will have even more advantages and the gap between rich and poor will grow. But I do like this quote from the article:
One might object that at least they’re in good company: other products which help rich kids get healthier/smarter/taller/prettier than poor kids include private tutors, gyms, hair salons, health insurance, clothing, books, and food.
Next the article presents the argument that rich people adopting a technology early helps to move it along the path to economies of scale and eventually a cost everyone can afford. This makes a certain amount of sense. But it would make even more sense for governments that care about their people to be the early adopters.
Also, it would be crazy for any forward-thinking government not to cover this; it could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in future health care expenses. In countries with public health care, this comes directly out of the government treasury; even in the US, it’s covered by Medicare after age 65. The government should be begging people to select embryos.
The most persistent cost barrier is likely to be in vitro fertilization itself, a necessary precursor. In the US, 2-3% of babies are born through IVF. For those kids, this is a no-brainer – even if the cost never comes down, the cheaper products are only a fraction of total IVF expense. What about the other 98%? If those parents feel like they have to get embryo selection (and therefore IVF) to keep up, this could be a significant burden. IVF isn’t fun – it requires pumping a woman full of mind-altering hormones for weeks, extracting eggs in a minor surgery, and then implanting embryos in another minor surgery, all with a decent chance that some step will fail and you’ll have to do it all again. It also costs $15,000 in the US (less in poorer countries), and unlike the genetics, the cost has barely gone down in the past twenty-five years.
Israel is cited as a country that is offering universal free IVF to its citizens. And here in the U.S., policies that have favorable long-term benefit-cost ratios just implement themselves, right?
All this is without any form of genetic engineering, remember. You are just selecting within the variation in naturally-occurring embryos. One can imagine accelerating this even more if generations of embryos can be spliced and diced by AIs and robots in a short amount of time. And even more if the actual genes are manipulated. (Ethical issues TBD, but if it can be done, someone somewhere will do it eventually.)
Incidentally, Brave New World is supposed to enter the public domain in the U.S. in 2028. But here is a copy you can buy for only $6000!
Nate Silver has put together a spreadsheet with a comprehensive answer to this question, based on records from 800 flights he personally has taken. You have to be a paid subscriber to his site to get the spreadsheet, but there are plenty of clues in the narrative. It is not crystal clear which factors are additive rather than overlapping.
First, the “base case” is a solo English-speaking American business traveler. Families and people who don’t speak perfect English are inconveniences that can be treated in a stochastic manner. More specifically, this base case is a solo domestic (U.S.) traveler, with TSA PreCheck or CLEAR, and not checking bags. For this base case, the rule is “60 minutes from walking through the airport door to departure.”
For a car commute, round up whatever Uber/Lyft says the trip will take by 30%. [For public transportation, my rule is to take the vehicle before the last vehicle that would get me there just barely on time.]
If parking or returning a rental car, add 15-30 minutes.
Add 15 minutes for a really big, busy airport (like JFK, O’Hare). 5-10 if you use that airport a lot and know it inside and out.
Add 5-10 minutes if you have a connection make. His reasoning: “This might seem silly since it doesn’t affect the departure time at the originating airport. But it raises the stakes for missing your flight. Also, if you arrive at the very last moment, you’ll likely be asked to gate-check your bag, which can get you off to a slower start when making that tight connection.”
Add 20 minutes if you do not have PreCheck/CLEAR, +5 for really big busy airports and -5 for small ones
Add another 20 minutes in bad weather.
For international, add 20-40 minutes if you don’t need to check in at the counter and another 15 (business class) to 30 (economy class) if you do.
Add 20 minutes if you just enjoy relaxing at the airport with a beverage before flying.
Special case: If you’re going somewhere (like Canada) that you need to clear immigration before getting on the plane, you need to allow an extra 30 minutes. Presumably it will save you the same amount at the other end (although in my personal experience, U.S. immigration is about as bad as it gets anywhere I have been.)
Okay, let’s try adding this up for my most common travel cases.
Case 1: A domestic business trip, let’s say I’m attending a 2-3 day conference. I have one bag that fits in the overhead compartment or can be gate-checked. I check in online. Weather is reasonable. I’m going to allow 60 minutes at the airport, +10 because my home airport of Philadelphia is pretty big and pretty busy but I know it well, +25 because I don’t have Precheck and security can be a real cluster-, +20 because I enjoy sitting down and having a beer before flying. That’s 1 hour 55 minutes, so the “2 hour rule” was just about right. I could do PreCheck if I really travel enough to make it worthwhile, and obviously I don’t need the beer, I just want it.
Case 2: An international trip with the family. I am past the stroller/car seat/diaper phase which would add exponential complication – not part of Nate Silver’s computational framework. Let’s say I am traveling in reasonable weather from the nightmare hell (but relatively easy to get to) hub of Newark. 60 minutes + 15 because it’s a nightmare hell hub + 10 minutes because there’s a connection + 20 minutes for security + 60 for counter check in (! – but yes, it can be this bad). I’ll skip that beer because I don’t want to get even more dehydrated on a long haul flight. I get 2 hours 40 minutes, so the “3 hour rule” is not far off.
So in conclusion, for me the 2 hour rule can maybe be shaved to 1.5 and the 3 hour rule to 2.5 if I want to live adventurously. I try to get to the airport by public transportation when I can though, so that adds another layer of likely delays. My rule there is to take the vehicle before the vehicle that would get me there just in time. Sometimes you just have to try to relax and make the most of wherever you happen to be, and not worry so much about the time. If I spent another half hour at home or the office before I left for the airport, what would I really do – either interact with other people or do something on a screen. Traveling is stressful, and it can be good to take a moment between the mad dash to the airport and security line, and the various inconveniences and indignities of actually flying. At the airport, I am more likely to read a book, have a beverage, or unwind a bit before flying if things aren’t too crazy.
Avi Loeb always says the aliens are coming for us. Other people say he is wrong because no aliens have conclusively and obviously showed up since he started making these predictions. The disturbing part is that the objects in question are either showing up much more often than they used to and/or much more often than predicted, or else they have always been showing up and we have just recently developed the technology we need to notice that they are there.
“The brightness of the object implies a diameter of 20 km, and there is not enough rocky material in interstellar space to deliver such a giant object per decade,” Loeb said…
He went on to say he thinks there’s a chance that the object could be engineered rather than naturally occurring…
“[31/ATLAS] may come to save us or destroy us,” he said. “We’d better be ready for both options and check whether all interstellar objects are rocks.”
and we really shouldn’t count on the alien mothership running an easily exploitable version of Windows 95 this time
Most frightening and/or depressing story: In case we still don’t have enough feedback loops to worry about, loss of Antarctic ice could also trigger volcanoes under Antarctica.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Policies to increase housing supply in the most economically dynamic cities can theoretically accelerate economic growth, since housing supply is not expanding fast enough and is therefore holding economic growth back. A lot of discussion has been focused around zoning, which is a local matter. But I offered some additional suggestions: investment in better transportation and communication infrastructure to reduce the friction of working across distances between homes and offices, effectively enlarging housing markets. And serious investments in construction productivity, which has been flat in the U.S. for decades. Ideas include more factory-based modular components. The U.S. has tried and failed at this before, but of course China is now leading the way. AI should also be pretty good at construction scheduling and logistics. The U.S. is somewhat successfully partnering with Korean ship-building expertise, at least on a small scale.
Mount Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, aka Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings (Guillaume Piolle)
