How cities can better confront climate change - KPBS

How cities can better confront climate change | KPBS Public Media

How cities can better confront climate change

Climate change across America. Cities are particularly vulnerable.

So, hundreds of local governments have drafted plans to cut their carbon emissions and prepare for more extreme weather. Milwaukee is one of them.

But very few cities have met their climate goals. Why not?

“We build cities just like termites build their cities or beavers engineer dams. And therefore, they should be classified as a form of nature,” Adrian McGregor says.

Today, On Point: We take a look at Milwaukee’s climate plan, and ask how cities can do better in reaching their climate goals.

Guests

Erick Shambarger, director of Environmental Sustainability for the City of Milwaukee, where he leads the Environmental Collaboration Office.

Joseph Kane, fellow at Brookings Metro, where his research focuses on infrastructure issues.

Adrian McGregor, founder and Chief Design Officer at McGregor Coxall, an urban design, landscape architecture and environment firm in Australia and the United Kingdom. Author of the new book “ Biourbanism: Cities as nature.”

Transcript

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: As the effects of climate change grow ever more inescapable, cities find themselves uniquely vulnerable. They’re also key contributors of carbon emissions. They account for more than 70% of CO2 emissions across the globe, according to the World Bank.

So that gives new urgency to the old ‘Think global, act local’ cliche. And cities are acting. Across the United States, more than 600 municipal governments have drafted climate change plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for more extreme weather. Milwaukee, Wisconsin is one of them.

MARINA DIMITRIJEVIC: It’ll be such a cleaner place for everybody. As we increase population and build the city that we want to see, I think we go from surviving to thriving.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s District 14 Alderwoman Marina Dimitrijevic last week on television station WISN. She’s a member of Milwaukee’s Common Council and the lead sponsor of the city’s climate plan. The plan aims to cut the city’s carbon emissions by 45% in the next seven years, and be carbon neutral by 2050. The plan is expected to be approved by Milwaukee city leaders on Tuesday. However, when it comes to meeting climate goals, the track record of hundreds of American cities isn’t so stellar. And here we have the tension between two truths.

Big challenges require bold solutions. But could falling short of those big goals disincentivize future enthusiasm, effort and funding to keep pushing towards trying to meet those big climate goals? That’s a problem, especially given the short-term decision making favored by American politicians more beholden to an election cycle than anything else. Or is there a different way to think about how cities should be preparing for their climate futures now, one that could resolve that tension between those two truths?

That’s what we’re going to try to explore today. And we’ll start by looking much more closely at Milwaukee’s climate plan. And to do that, we’re joined by Erick Shambarger. He’s environmental sustainability director at the City of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office, and he joins us from Milwaukee. Erick, welcome to the program.

ERICK SHAMBARGER: Hello, Meghna. Thank you for having me. It’s exciting to be here.

CHAKRABARTI: So first of all, you know, I mentioned that cities are particularly vulnerable, or finding themselves ever more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. How is that playing out in Milwaukee? What is changing about life there as emissions keep pouring into the atmosphere?

SHAMBARGER: Well, all of us are going to be affected by climate change regardless of whether you live in rural areas or whether you live in cities. But the way cities have been built up over the last, you know, 50 or 100 years, I think makes urban residents particularly vulnerable. You know, we’ve paved far too much of our city to, you know, accommodate the automobile, and that creates urban heat islands. It creates extra flooding risk when it rains.

There’s not as much place for all that rainwater to go. And so, it increases the opportunity for homes to get flooded and those sorts of things. So cities have a unique opportunity to do what’s right for climate change and take action. But we also have these vulnerabilities that are staring us in the face. You know, when I was driving into the studio today, there was a little bit of a haze over the city, and I think that was the result of some of the wildfires in Canada. And so you see these global climate phenomena that are affecting all of us.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. You know, the climate plan has some very interesting specific statistics about Milwaukee’s vulnerability. You mentioned flooding, for example. I’m seeing here that the plan says, “Risk factor, a group calculates that almost 20,000 properties in Milwaukee County are currently at risk of flooding. That risk will only increase in the future.” It also says here that without action, “Without decisive climate action, it could cost taxpayers in Milwaukee County or statewide hundred of billions of dollars in terms of disasters related to climate.” Is that Milwaukee or the state?

SHAMBARGER: Well, I think it’s a statewide figure. So we have major challenges. I mean, again, whether it’s wildfires in the West, whether it’s flooding risk, it does damage our property. And we’re going have to pay for the effects of climate change one way or another. So our preference would be to be more proactive and try to redesign the city going forward to help reduce some of these risks.

CHAKRABARTI: So we’re going to talk about that proactive set of goals in a second. But I do think it’s important, you know, I don’t like using a broad brush and being like, “Cities are vulnerable.” Putting some gritty detail around, I think it’s quite important. And it’s in this report. I mean, it’s in the climate plan. For example, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says that has a prediction that by 2050, Milwaukee will see three times as many days with heat above 105 degrees Fahrenheit as it does now. Now, specifically in Milwaukee, what impact, you mention the heat islands, but the overall increase in, you know, deadly hot days, what impact could that have?

SHAMBARGER: Well, it’s certainly not good for the health of our residents, you know, especially our more vulnerable residents who may not have air conditioning in their homes. And when you have these not only hot days, but hot and humid days, and it doesn’t cool off at nighttime, that can really put vulnerable populations at risk for, you know, heat-related stress, heart attacks, asthma increases. All of those threats are real. And there’s a real emphasis in this plan to focus on solutions that support our vulnerable populations and to do more to address racial and economic equity.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, and the vulnerability is really multifaceted, isn’t it? Right, Because the plan talks about how a large portion of Milwaukee residents are already food insecure and climate change could make food supply chains even more vulnerable, which would magnify the food insecurity of those Milwaukee residents even further. But then also regarding heat, there’s an interesting fact here, which I’m wondering why it was included in the plan. It says, “Higher temperatures can also result in an increase in violent crime.”

SHAMBARGER: Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve seen that, right? Where people are coming out in the summertime, and you have people can get angry or they can feel more stress. And I think sometimes that can act out in unproductive ways in our community. So, you know, we’ve got to find solutions to address the overall climate, but then also, again, help people adapt to these hot days and have, you know, places to go and ways to cool off so that it doesn’t spill over into negative consequences.

CHAKRABARTI: Mm hmm. Okay. So that’s at least kind of a quick snapshot about the climate vulnerability that Milwaukee specifically faces. If, you know, the globe continues on its march towards more carbon in the atmosphere. So let’s talk about the plan here. Now, I mentioned that one of the near-term goals is that 45% reduction in the city’s carbon emissions in the next seven years. There’s ten big ideas in the plan, Erick. We’re not going to be able to hit all of them this hour, but what would you say is the most important of the ten, to begin with?

SHAMBARGER: Well, there’s two related to residential housing, so about 32% of our emissions comes from residential housing. And when we talk to residents, the intersection of, you know, people wanting better, more affordable housing really came to light. And so within the plan, two of the ten big ideas are focused on housing. One is regarding retrofitting or repairing our existing housing stock to make them more energy efficient.

And when we do that, we’re going to try to do better coordination with other city housing programs like Lead Abatement so that when we have an opportunity to work with a family and make their house better, we’re incorporating energy efficiency, potentially renewable energy, along with other basic housing improvements.

The other strategy related to housing is to build new housing in our cities. You know, much of our housing stock was built before 1978, and so we have a need to build new housing from the get-go that’s designed to be net zero energy, all electric. And it’s easier in some respects to make the climate changes on new housing, because you can design them from the beginning to be very tight and have, you know, better technologies to help us get to carbon neutrality by 2050.

CHAKRABARTI: Mm hmm. Okay. So quick side question. You had mentioned a fact that I’m glad you did, because I was having a hard time finding some data on what are the biggest sources right now of Milwaukee’s emissions. So 32% from residential housing. What are the other big ones?

SHAMBARGER: Yeah, and this profile is similar to many cities. You know, it may change on the margins, but in Milwaukee, 22% is from transportation. So that’s the gasoline and diesel that we burn in our vehicles. 31% from residential. 23% from large commercial buildings. 22% from industrial. And then depending on the way you count it, about 2% is from waste, solid waste that we throw in the landfill and it can decompose and become greenhouse gases.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So you talked about residential housing. The other main big part of the plan is greening the grid. Okay? Really, really interesting. Tell me more about that.

SHAMBARGER: So nationally, the kind of the blueprint for getting to carbon neutrality is first you green the grid, so you replace fossil fuels that we use to produce electricity. So many power plants burn coal or natural gas. So we need to transition how we make electricity from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. And then we work to electrify transportation.

So supporting electric vehicles for cars and then supporting electrification for buildings. So that’s the basic blueprint. Under pinning all of our strategies, about over half of the emissions reduction is going to be from greening the grid. And so it’s really important, I think, for cities to engage with their electric utility providers and on policy that can accelerate the amount of renewable energy we have on the grid.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So can I just jump in here? Because this is a really, really important point, because I’ve seen that for the state of Wisconsin overall right now, that it’s roughly 10% of the energy comes from renewables. Does that number sound about right to you?

SHAMBARGER: Yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So but you were leading towards where my next question is, which was okay, what exactly can cities do in terms of encouraging the utilities themselves to increase the green energy in their mix? I mean, do you have negotiation power, policy power? What is it?

SHAMBARGER: Well, it’s going to vary state by state. So some states like California have a lot more tools at their disposal for cities to choose where their electricity is coming from. In Wisconsin, we are a regulated utility state, which means we have our electric power utility is owned by a private company called We Energies, and they’re regulated by the state. So the first thing cities can do is they can open up lines of communication with their utility provider and say, “Look, we have goals. We need you to be partners in this. Let’s talk about solutions where we can increase the amount of renewable energy for our city buildings, but also for the community at large.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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