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Global Warning - Dec 31, 2004 - Printable Version
- I'd Like a Bowl of Brazil Nuts, Please
by Robin Buckallew
As we reach the end of another year, many of us will find ourselves looking back on the events of the year gone by, sometimes with anger, sometimes with pain, and sometimes with amusement or even joy. Simultaneously, we are looking ahead to the upcoming year with a curious blend of trepidation and hope. For many of us, the disappointments of the past few months may have become nearly overwhelming, leaving us to dread the future with a sick feeling in the pit of our stomach. It is often difficult to find hope in the face of hurricanes, tornados, rapidly rising global average temperatures, rising sea levels, and now tsunamis that have claimed thousands of lives. We hear about the threat of a sixth mass extinction event, the rapidly shrinking rainforests, acid rain, polluted air and water, and common everyday chemicals that can kill us. The ozone layer is shrinking as the deserts are expanding. Where are we to look to find any good news at all? For the new year, I am going to share with you a tale of human hope, a tale of promise, a tale of innovations so striking and so amazing that the rest of the world can only sit back in wonder at what has been accomplished by a forward thinking city with vision. This is a tale of human ingenuity and daring, a tale of cooperation and conscious planning for the future. This is a tale of one man's quest for a better answer that led an entire city to a better life. For a vision of where we could be headed, I would like you to look south - to Curitiba, Brazil. Yes, you heard me right, Brazil. In a Third World country noted for poverty and unemployment, a ray of shining hope, pointing towards a future the First World has not yet been able to embrace.
Curitiba is a town of over a million people on the coast of Brazil, just south of Sao Paulo. A city suffering from the same poverty, unemployment and urban blight that afflicts most cities of any size. In 1971, the bold vision of a daring mayor, Jaime Lerner, changed the way Curitiba views itself, and the way it is viewed by the rest of the world. An architect by trade, Lerner had a dream of reclaiming the city for its inhabitants, making it a city where people could live and work and play. A city that was built around people instead of around cars. A city that could attract business without shortchanging the needs of the citizens. Unlike many dreamers, Lerner had the ability to act upon his vision and turn it into a stunning reality. One night, while the rest of the city slept, he took a few people who worked for him, and they tore up a city street, and remade it as an automobile-free zone. A zone for people. Of course, the automobile owners did protest. They staged a demonstration, bringing the cars en masse one morning with the intention of driving down the newly reclaimed street. The city was ready for them. The mayor had gathered together groups of children, provided them with large sheets of white paper and paints, and let them use the former street as their playground. The automobiles stopped, unable to proceed without plowing down the happy children who now had a place where they could safely play. The area remains automobile-free to this day, an area for people. Flowers have been planted everywhere, and are tended by the people of the city.
Of course, it isn't enough just to tear up a street and plant flowers. There are real needs in any city that must be met. Transportation is a real need, and as idyllic as it might seem to have a city built around people, those people must be able to access their jobs, their grocery stores, and their homes. So what answer could one come up with that would be ultimately satisfying? Brace yourself, middle class America, for I am about to use those words that strike fear and hatred into the heart of every car fancier everywhere - MASS TRANSPORTATION. Curitiba simply established a mass transportation system that was designed to meet the needs of all the people, from the richest all the way to the most destitute. Well, OK, maybe it really wasn't "simple". But it was successful. Curitiba has a bus system that is clean, efficient, pleasant and affordable. It is no social stigma to ride the buses in Curitiba - everybody does it. Few people regard it as beneath their dignity, and seem to have little problem with the presence of people from other classes riding with them (a situation that doesn't happen often here in the "classless" society of modern America). The local architects and city planners met the challenge of designing routes, streets, and even bus depots that maximized the efficiency of the bus system, allowing for frequent, convenient departure times. The stations are specially designed to allow rapid, efficient loading and unloading. The buses themselves are of a unique design. They can be made longer to hold more passengers (270 people on a single bus), but are "bi-articulated", meaning they are actually three buses joined together, with special design to allow ease of turning corners. Curitiba's bus system is run in a public-private collaboration that allows the owners of the bus company to make a profit, charge a reasonable fare, and provide services that serve the public good. Still unwilling to give up your car? Okay, some people in Curitiba still choose to drive everywhere. Do they curse the buses, as so many in America are prone to do? Not at all. You see, with so many people on the buses, the roads are relatively free of traffic jams, making them easier and more user friendly for those few people who do choose to drive. It also manages to ease up parking problems significantly. This is not only nice for those people looking for a parking space for their single passenger car, it is also environmentally quite sound, as much of the impervious surface in the United States today is taken up with parking lots and garages. This is land that in Curitiba has been able to be turned into parks or lawns or even into more businesses or homes. As a result of the ease of access to working and shopping in Curitiba, even from the suburbs, the area has become most attractive to businesses wishing to locate in the region. This has in turn had a very positive effect on Curitiba's economy. Many large cities in the industrial world are facing serious problems attracting businesses because they fail to meet the minimum clean air standards required, and must go through severe contortions in order to allow any new business to relocate in their area (think Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas). Many of these cities face the air pollution problems they do because of the density of the single-occupant vehicular traffic that clogs their streets and contaminates their air. Suddenly, Curitiba's solution begins to look quite attractive.
In addition, Curitiba has implemented some other innovative solutions to common urban problems. In Curitiba, as in much of Brazil, there are shanty towns where people live in cardboard boxes or other makeshift homes. These homeless people cannot be easily serviced by city utilities. Often, the narrowness of the streets makes it impossible for the garbage trucks to access the areas at all, leaving the whole area cluttered with all forms of domestic garbage. So the city implemented a program of trading bags of food for bags of garbage. The homeless can bring in a bag of garbage they have collected, and the city will trade it for a bag of badly needed food (actually, you don't have to be homeless - they don't check, they just do the trade). The city also has many programs allowing unemployed citizens to work for the city in various capacities for short periods of time, doing public services that help to maintain the city. This allows them some sort of income, gets many city projects done, and leaves a lot of dignity intact. It brings hope to people who are living in despair. So, has Curitiba solved all the problems that plague a large city? Not at all. There are many problems that remain. After all, this is a singularly impoverished area, in a country that is reeling under its foreign debt and still staggering to recover from austerity programs that were implemented by the World Bank and the IMF. These programs, often implemented at the behest of First World multinational corporations, did little to relieve the suffering of the citizens of Brazil, and did a lot to line the pockets of the corporations. Curitiba has managed to carve out a little island of sanity in an insane world, and they are doing this in spite of sometimes seemingly impossible odds. They have a great deal they could teach the First World, if only we could step outside our convictions long enough to see it.
In addition to the steps being taken in Brazil, there are many other innovative and daring moves being made around the world. I will briefly mention a few of them here today, with a promise of giving you some more details on many of these in future columns. In Germany, many steps are being taken in an attempt to resolve difficult environmental problems. Since waste reduction is such a key factor, Germany has enacted a law giving corporations cradle-to-grave responsibility for products (and packaging). The knowledge that they will have to pay for the disposal of any worn out item, or any excess packaging, has generated a new sense of responsibility in German corporations, who now make products that last longer, are less likely to be disposable, and are not wrapped in all sorts of superfluous plastic and cardboard that will just be thrown away as soon as the product is purchased. In India, where deforestation began to cause severe environmental problems such as desertification and avalanches, not to mention serious shortages of forest products, a tree-hugging movement known as Chipko has captured the imagination of the world. It has also had a very positive effect on the preservation of remaining ancient forests, and on the reforestation of areas that have been clear cut. In addition, it has had the effect of empowering women and making some needed changes in the ancient ways that have prevented women from owning property or having any say in the community. All over the globe, positive steps are being taken to move from a consumer oriented, use it and throw it away, don't care about tomorrow society to living more lightly on the planet, living a satisfying and fulfilled life without destroying the future for everyone else.
What about the United States, you ask? Are we hopeless? Can anything be done here? Is anything being done here? The United States has proven a bit difficult. You see, it is a land of plenty (or at least the illusion of plenty). As long as we think there is enough for tomorrow, it is difficult for us to take seriously the idea of conservation today. But all the things mentioned above, and more, could be done here. It takes a little effort and a lot of thinking outside the box. It takes a willingness to abandon old ways of thinking, and realize that there are many other possible ways to do things. And I am happy to say, there are people doing just that. All over the nation, there are communities taking steps to try to work for a better future. For instance, Seattle, Washington, decided to honor the Kyoto treaty, even in the face of our government's refusal to sign on, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by at least the amount recommended by the treaty. Seattle has also implemented a fee system of garbage collection that is based on magnitude of usage, which has served to increase recycling and decrease disposal of unwanted items. In California, the automobile industry faces higher standards than the federal government requires them to meet. Some communities and states have implemented a sliding scale fee for water usage, which charges people higher rates for above normal usage, and encourages water conservation. All over the country, indeed all over the globe, people contribute to environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, and the Audubon Society. Protests and boycotts have forced many fast-food outlets to abandon Styrofoam packaging, have persuaded Home Depot to carry sustainably-harvested lumber, and Staples to recycle. All these steps are small steps, to be sure, but they are in the right direction. The United States is not hopeless at all. We are asleep. All over the country, alarm clocks are pealing. In World War II, it required an attack on Pearl Harbor to awaken the sleeping giant to the reality of tragedy in the rest of the world. This time, let us be awakened by the examples being set for us by the bold actions of people such as Jaime Lerner. Let us go forward into this year, and beyond, with a determination that we, with our vast resources, can learn from an impoverished city that managed to find a better way of life for its citizens.
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