Last week, I had the honour of a wonderful book launch organized by my publisher, the University of Toronto Press, and hosted at the University of Toronto bookstore. The event launched the paperback version of my book Solved: how the great cities of the world are fixing the climate crisis.
The first question, of course, was “why did you write an updated version?” and the answer is pretty simple: things have changed since I wrote the original book and launched it in 2020, but the basic motivation remains—to share the stories of the successful actions in many of the world’s great cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so people know and have hope that we can address the climate crisis and can demand the needed changes.
What has changed?
First of all, the science is more certain—and damning. We have to nearly halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and nearly halve fossil fuel use by 2035. In other words, it is even more urgent to act now—and the best way is to take what is working somewhere and do it everywhere. It is also clear that gas, which is still thought of as a transition fuel in some quarters, is not. It is nearly as bad for climate as coal because of leaks in the system that leak methane directly to the atmosphere.
Yet the fossil fuel industry is still spreading falsehoods about gas—perhaps we should call them lies. For example, there is a significant controversy in British Columbia, Canada about industry advertisements that claim that LNG lowers emissions. It is a laughable claim - burning any fossil fuel adds to emissions, and turning gas into LNG and LNG back into gas are energy-intensive processes – but the ads are everywhere in an effort to change the public debate. It’s incumbent upon all of us to fight back against these deliberately misleading narratives, and it’s my hope Solved can be a resource.
What’s also changed is that there is a growing acceptance that the economic dogmas that gained popularity from the 1980s—loosely referred to as neoliberalism—both fuel the climate crisis and are no longer fit for purpose. We need to craft new rules that prioritize the well-being of people and planetary health over short term consumption. The ideas of ecological economists, the well-being school, and others are starting to show us the way. Once thought of as being fringe, they are becoming more and more accepted, as even the IMF now says. Cities like Amsterdam are in the vanguard of applying these theories in a practical, effective way.
The link between climate and health, while not new, has emerged after the COVID-19 pandemic as a critical reason to act to reduce pollutants. New studies show lung inflation facilitates cancer and dementia, for example. So the effort to build dense cities where people can rely on public transit, walking, and cycling rather than having to drive polluting vehicles (even if electric) is not just a climate and economic strategy, it’s a public health strategy, one which leading Mayors like London’s Sadiq Khan have boldly implemented.
In the four years since Solved was first published, innovation in actions by cities has accelerated, which is why it was important to rewrite the book and add a new chapter. Ideas like Climate Budgets—requiring city departments to get a carbon allocation from the allowable emissions just as they get a financial allocation from the allowable spending—have gone from radical new ideas to actions being studied and implemented in cities in Europe, Africa, India, North America and beyond.
There is still hope. But we need to multiply these actions at scale, over the next five years. As a Canadian who lived through last summer's wildfires, I have seen a hint of the future that will come if we don’t. Ethically, environmentally, and financially, it’s not a future we can survive. I wrote Solved again as part of my effort to help us avoid that looming disaster. I did it to show a possible path to avoid the worst of climate breakdown and to add my voice to those giving people arguments to force our government, business, philanthropy, and religious organisations to act now, while we can. Well worth writing the same book twice—and many times more.
🎧 Listen to the Cities 1.5 Podcast
A reminder that we are in full swing of Season 3 of the podcast I host, Cities 1.5.
You can listen online and via this link you should be able to subscribe to Cities 1.5 wherever you listen to podcasts.