Vertical horizons: farming matrix

The iconic "Toronto Sky Farm" (design and image copyright, Gordon Graff).

Today on Swedish Radio's science program, "Vetandets värld," you could hear about a Swedish company's efforts to develop urban farming systems. The company, Plantagon, is not only developing innovative designs for vertical agriculture, but it is doing so in partnership with the native American Onandoga Nation. This is worth learning more about. The company was a partner in organizing the recent conference, Urban Agriculture Summit, held at the end of January, 2013, in Linköping, Sweden. You can read about Gordon Graff's iconic design and study for his Toronto Sky Farm, as well as lots, lots more about urban farming, on the Treehugger website. (Let's hope that Swedish Radio's interest lasts longer than one day).

Do you have a company and do you feel moved to develop a climate change consciousness? Read Sarah Cornell's blog on the website, Hagainitiativet (The Haga Initiative), which promotes active, responsible corporate behavior in relation to climate change. (Does this mean that even Coca-Cola has realized that it's hard to have market dominance when you don't have a planet?)

Stay tuned for more vertical thinking from a horizontal position!

"Danes like ecology more than money"

"Danes like ecology more than money, and other short stories." Is this for real? It stands proudly, larger-than-life, in one of the concourses at Copenhagen's international airport, Kastrup. Walking by, I simply stopped in awe. What was this telling me? Ecology is an alternative to money? The commercialization of ecology? More greenwash? Well, that would be OK, I guess, if it actually made one want to ride a bicycle instead of a taxi. Preferring to have money is of course always a nice idea. It does help when buying that next titanium-framed two-wheeled dream machine that I've been lusting after. Or does it mean that "the Danish" don't like money, or taxis? Well, I guess it's a "successful" ad, right? I mean, here we are talking about it . . . What's your version?

What does it all mean?

Do you have any theories about what the meaning of this sign might be? The literal translation of the Swedish is quite obvious, of course (OK, I'm just teasing all you non-Swedish speakers), but what does it really mean? Stay tuned to this station for more clues . . . And, by the way, the dark quality of the photo just reflects the light level on a typical winter overcast mid-morning at southern Swedish latitudes. It's good we have other things to think about, right?

Mainstreaming is not headline news

Right in the mainstream--coping with winter, nationally and locally, Öresund

There's not much about climate change response in Sweden that's exciting and attention-grabbing these days. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, since it seems that the more headlines there are about climate change at the global level, the fewer there are in the Swedish press, about what's happening in this country. Entire weeks can go by with scarcely a mention in any of the half-dozen or so larger newspapers of any Swedish climate change-related activity. To know if there's anything going on, you've got to do a lot of sleuthing. My theory is that this is because responding to climate change is gradually becoming mainstreamed here. I'm not sure yet if this is the best way to go about it, but it does help to explain the lack of media coverage. Climate change is just part of everyday business . . . maybe.

Believe it or not, but one of the coolest places to see innovative thinking about climate change is deep inside the Swedish bureaucracy, in one of the least trendy-seeming places. It's not at the Swedish EPA (Naturvårdsverket), for instance, nor at the Swedish Met Office (SMHI), nor even at the Ministry of Environment, all of which have admirable programs underway, as you would expect. No, this nest of real solid work on societal aspects of climate change is Boverket, The Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning. I'll be describing some of their activities in the coming weeks, but one of their more recent achievements has been the result of a massive exercise in producing a Vision for Sweden 2025, which the Government commissioned from them. The defining objective for the vision is a society guided by sustainable development, and based on the over hundred goals, from national to local level, that have been defined for the country's physical societal planning. The resulting Vision was released, as a "web app," with a surprising lack of media attention and undeserved modesty, on December 12, barely a week ago. The Vision poses four megatrends, of which climate change is one. Since so far the whole thing is only in Swedish, I'll be telling more about it in coming posts. Stay tuned (and Visionary!)

They're saying, "Canada is a brake shoe"

                                                                        Figure by Nimal Kumar

Whatever your view of the fact that Canada, in the company of Russia and Japan, has continued to stay out of the Kyoto Protocol and its renewal at the recently concluded Doha climate talks, Swedish opinion is surprised. Much of the reporting about the conclusion of the talks has pointedly mentioned Canada's earlier withdrawal from the Protocol. For example, one of Sweden's most prominent climate change publicists, Johan Rockström, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, was quoted, in the Sunday edition* of the largest Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, as saying that not only was Canada a "brake shoe" (Sw. "bromskloss") in reaching more sweeping agreements, but it was a "camouflaged brake shoe." This is real insider talk. Actually, it seems that it is Russia that is the real master at such camouflage, which means that it is pretending to be a constructive player at the same time as it moves to protect its oil and gas industries and refuses to sign. It's been difficult to see the accuracy of extending the metaphor to Canada, though, since it isn't even pretending. Shall we say that it is a "plain-as-day brake shoe"? What's out there for everybody to see in plain daylight are the tar sands of northern Alberta, and now that market prices are high enough to sustain their extraction, they're too true to be good. It's a pity that Canada, which once had a global reputation as an environmental champion, has gone the way of the camouflaged, and is now considered, in the climate change world, as one of the bad guys. Deservedly.

*Kihlström, Saffan & Clas Svahn. "Nytt avtal får skarp kritik." Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Sunday, 9 December 2012, 10.

Keeping to a fresh agenda

If you're interested in climate change, you need to be flexible in how you perceive the world around you. It's obvious that there are different realities out there, depending on whom you speak or listen to. So far, almost all the predictions of trends have ended up being too conservative. If anything, the real mistake has been in being too careful about how steep those curves are. While most of the scientific community is now seriously considering a world where the average global temperature will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, many journalists and prominent politicians are still arguing about whether or not we are adjusting to a 2-degree-model. Tonight, on Swedish state television's public affairs program, Agenda, the program's host, Camilla Kvartoft, tried to be impressively aggressive in her interview of the Swedish Minister of Environment, Lena Ek. Kvartoft wasted our time by keeping to her notes that pushed for a discussion based on the 2-degree-mode, whereas Ek seemed interested in talking about concrete climate change response measures. That is, she kept trying to do so, but the show's host kept pushing her into a meaningless 2-degree box. After all, we're heading for 4 degrees, at least, and concrete measures are what we need. In setting our Agenda, Kvartoft is one media star who should get a new scriptwriter. Although she probably meant well, it's too bad she came across as outdated, which weakens her credibility. I'll get my agenda somewhere else, thanks.

It's getting hot in there. The real agenda's in the bag.