Beyond the seawall: a changing climate calls for dynamic solutions

On the face of it, it’s difficult to see similarities between the San Francisco Bay Area and Christchurch, New Zealand. The former is a major hub for one of the largest economies in the world with a population of over 7.5 million people, and home to tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook. The latter is a gateway to Antarctica, historically a market town and port that services an agricultural hinterland, and home to just under 400,000 people. However, when landscape architect and UC Berkeley Professor Kristina Hill examines the two places through the bi-focal lenses of geology and landscape, unexpected parallels emerge.

Christchurch's 2011 earthquake shifted the city's water
table, leading to structures sinking into the Avon estuary.

Both places face similar challenges: how to adapt their coastal and estuarine environments to sea level rise, how to live with a high and rising groundwater table, how to factor increasing salt and freshwater flooding into planning their urban environments and infrastructure while surviving, and preferably thriving, in highly active seismic zones.

Read the Foreground story - “Beyond the seawall: a changing climate calls for dynamic solutions.”

We banned cigarette ads - now we should ban car ads, too

A ban on car advertising may seem far-fetched, but if you compare the automotive and the tobacco industries, the similarities may be closer than you think. Smoking and car use have comparable health costs, yet while we have the strictest tobacco promotion laws in the world, we allow car companies to promote themselves unbridled.

Britain recently estimated that they could save themselves
£1.6 billion in health costs if they copied the Dutch approach to cycling.

Smoking accounts for around 15,000 deaths and an estimated cost to the economy of $31.5 billion each year. Car accidents alone cost the economy an only slightly smaller $29.7 billion, but this does not include the significant health costs of air pollution and inactivity resulting from car use. Around 1300 people die and 32,000 are seriously injured in vehicle accidents each year. And while the vast majority of smoking-related deaths occur in those aged over 65, road trauma destroys young lives. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 29. Even more damning, however, is the little-known fact that the premature deaths from the road toll may be dwarfed by those from vehicle emissions.

Read the comment by Arwen Birtch from The Age - “We banned cigarette ads - now we should ban car ads, too.”

Much to learn from protracted tobacco debate

Much is to be learned from how tobacco supporters challenged the unequivocal science on the dangers of the drug.

Climate change is equally unequivocally true and so those who advocate action to mitigate the difficulty need to take their lead from what happened in that protracted controversy.

A story published in The Hill headed: “What can tobacco teach us about climate change policy?” points to those similarities, including comments such as “the science is not settled on this”.

“Fortunately, science has a way of winning out in the long run, when scientists largely agree as they do on these issues,” it reports.