Trump won. The climate lost. Drill baby, drill. Burn baby, burn.

It’s time to rethink our entire approach to climate design.

There are ironies galore at COP 29, a yearly meeting of nations to advance their commitments to the war on climate change. It started on Monday in Azerbaijan, a former Russian petro-state, where organisers have already been fingered for corrupt dealings on fossil fuel. In the same week the world's second largest CO₂ emitter elected a climate denier as leader.

Irony begets tragedy. The aim from previous meetings in Kyoto and Paris was to reduce greenhouse gases to limit global warming to 1.5^oC. Scientists now declare we’ve just reached 1.54^oC. Put a fork in it, that’s cooked.

The reasons are many. Not least, so many Western nations, already struggling to meet their targets, are being assailed by newly-empowered right-wing governments to water down or walk away from commitments altogether. And China, despite making (and installing) more sustainable technology than the rest of the world combined, holds to its earlier leave pass to go slow.

Not just governments, the market favours the big emitters and polluters. Overnight, one of the largest oil and gas producers, Dutch Shell won a court case against a judgement brought on by left-wing climate campaigners. The case refuted the requirement for the company to adopt stringent requirements to limit emissions. The tap is opened.

But it gets worse, triple fold. Estimates are that Trump’s actions as denier-in-chief could create 2,700 million extra tonnes of CO₂equivalent (Mt CO₂-e) by 2030. Wars are huge producers of CO_2.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created an additional 175 Mt CO₂-e to date, and Israel’s fights in the Middle East has added 60 Mt CO₂-e.

For comparison, Australia, the world’s 14^th biggest greenhouse gas polluter, releases about 466 Mt CO₂-e per year.

The white flag has not been raised at the COP, but soon it will.

“COP this young ‘Arry” as Roy Rene was want to say.

It’s clear the climate war is lost. We cannot limit global warming to safe levels, no matter how many wind turbines and solar panels we promote. We need to pivot away from trying to tame the climate, to dealing with it’s worst excesses. Designing for a changed climate if we can’t prevent that change.

Just as we seemed to have mastered the sustainable technologies for energy production and storage, seen a rise in electric vehicles and net-zero buildings, it may all be swept away in violent weather. One cruel irony.

Sustainability is now survival. How to design our infrastructure, cities, towns and buildings to survive the modern version of ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’: hotter temperatures; rising sea levels; rain, storms, floods, tornadoes and cyclones; and bush and wild fires. Which will lead to the original apocalyptic warnings of pestilence, war, famine and death.

Not for a moment should we shift from seeking to reduce fossil fuels and outgassing to zero, but for all our protests, policies and projects, it’s just not happening fast enough. And the world we’ve designed to live in can’t cope. Just ask the residents of Valencia, Spain.

One salutary story. In 2016 the then head of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, sought to reduce the research on climate change in order to increase research on climate resilience. He was pilloried by his own, and other, scientists. The gullible press followed.

But he persisted and CSIRO is all the better for having his ‘Main Sequence Ventures’ and ‘Missions’ program that can address the technologies to address climate effects.

This is the pivot in sustainability that I will be encouraging as MC at tomorrow’s Sustainability Summit. Check it out. Next week I will try to summarise my findings on this fundamental change in design and climate.

design-i #5, 13 Nov 2024. Researched and written by Tone Wheeler, architect / Adjunct Prof UNSW / President AAA. The views expressed are his. design-i is a new column on design ideas that replaces Tone on Tuesday. Old ToT columns can be found here and you can still contact TW at toneontuesday@gmail.com.

Tone Wheeler

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