Climate change action: Balancing Act

NRU
Oct. 19, 2016
Leah Wong

As municipalities across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area adapt to climate change, they cannot ignore other urban challenges, warns author and climate change activist Naomi Klein.

Speaking Monday at a University of Toronto Daniel’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design event, Klein said that in making the transition to renewal energy, municipalities must also address housing affordability and poverty in urban areas.

“Because we live in this time of overlapping crises we need to craft solutions that solve multiple problems at once,” said Klein. “We need integrated, intersectional climate solutions that radically bring down emissions but also fight inequality at multiple fronts.”

For example, Klein said that as government leaders make the shift to renewable energy they should also empower local communities to own and control their own renewable power projects instead of relying only on major corporations.

She noted that municipalities across GTHA are trying to balance demand for critical and costly infrastructure investment against a political unwillingness to raise taxes. Klein said that if Canada collected higher royalties from its natural resource industries, such as oil and gas, governments could boost funding for infrastructure.

“In Canada it is shocking the extent to which we give away our natural resources,” said Klein. “We have some of the lowest royalties in the world for some of our oil and gas and mining… If we wanted to we could take a bigger piece of the wealth and pay for the leap to the new economy.”

At the event, Canadian Centre for Architecture director Mirko Zardini called for increased coordination between governments and the building industry to promote effective implementation of green building practices. He cited one example of the construction of a zero emission building adjacent to a parking lot. While the building itself is sustainable, he said, the parking lot undermines the broader intent to reduce emissions.

Klein said architects have found ways to design buildings in more efficient and sustainable ways than in the past, but suggested more regulation is needed to make greener building techniques standard industry practice.

“It’s possible to build this incredibly effi cient building, but there’s [the issue of] why isn’t it happening everywhere? We’ve been stuck at this stage,” said Klein. “It’s not going to happen on its own.”

Klein also cautioned that green building practices, if determined only by private market forces, could become a luxury item with a premium price tag. Setting sustainable design practices through legislation, she argued, would make a green-focused economy affordable for everyone.