CARBON REVERSAL

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (IPCC) has no legal power. It simply provides those with power the best available scientific information on changing weather patterns the causes and effects.

Last month, IPCC warned world leaders that significant alterations to the Earth’s weather patterns are real, and it has consequences, Many in power and enriched by a fossil fuel dependencies counter that is folly. To such “climate deniers”, New York commentator Tom Friedman puts it the ways: if we invest in clean energy and Climate Weirding continues unabated, we’ll still end up with a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable world.

IPCC’s international network of scientists and policy makers ominously, for the first time, have spelled out some of the identifiable consequences of climatic shifts and jolts yet to come to the peoples of the world. They will cause migration problems and disrupt food production. Images of doom and gloom abounded. The good thing is that IPCC has set off another round of discussions of the sustainability of modern civilization.

The sky isn’t falling. It’s worse and we have to act.

Reducing Carbons

Our chronic burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power modern life is heating up the sky. Glaciers and polar caps are melting at an alarming rate. It is not a matter of slowing the rise of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or even of stopping it. In light of IPCC findings, we must reserve the trends. That means many things to many groups. To transportation specialists, it means phase out of internal combustion engines. Happily, it is already happening.

Human (walking, biking) and electric modes of transport have inherent benefits and should be encouraged. Advances in transit controls bring higher service levels. Witness scores of driverless metros and effective mini-metros in Europe and Asia, smart links in airports and campuses, and breakthroughs in automated transit networks.

Solar Synergy

Transit projects require management and control of extensive interconnected pieces of urban real estate. Integrating solar collection into new (and old) transit rights-of-way creates carbon-free electricity right where it’s needed.

Massive conversion from ICE fleets to podcars can quickly reduce GHG from the transport sector. Alone it won’t save our troubled planet, but it will have a positive payback for infrastructure investment over the next decade or two.