Opinion: We Don't Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

[Debra Javeline]

Dear colleagues,

 

Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina have a compelling op-ed in the NYT, “We Don’t Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete: The long-term needs of ecosystems should come before our knee-jerk expectations about infrastructure.”

 

Is there any scholarship related to this topic?  Presumably, those focused on climate change even within Biden’s own government understand the potential harms of an infrastructure program that ignores climate issues, but is there a holistic approach, with the infrastructure people talking to the climate-concerned?  And is the conversation informed by good research on what infrastructure should be rebuilt to maximize mitigation and adaptation efforts?  Does such research exist?  Suggestions for specific publications would be most welcome.

 

All the best,

Debra

 

*****

Debra Javeline

Associate Professor | Department of Political Science | University of Notre Dame | 2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls | Notre Dame, IN 46556 | tel: 574-631-2793

 

Fellow, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Core faculty, Russian and East European Studies Program

Affiliated faculty, Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative

 

[Debra Javeline]

Dear colleagues,

 

Biden announced new commitments on climate action today, and it reminded me that I received not a single response to my query below about the Biden infrastructure plan.  I wonder why.  If the climate plans and the infrastructure plans are not integrated, how can the climate plans succeed?  Is no one conducting research on the ideal infrastructure for a climate-altered planet?

 

All the best,

Debra

[Rafael Friedmann]

I heard a talk by the head of sustainability at Autocad about 2 years ago at a HAAS/UC Berkeley event on the future of work. She showed the daunting amounts of materials that would be used to further urbanize our growing human population by 2050.  Without rethinking very deeply what Earth can provide sustainably, we will not be able to build a future that offers wellbeing to most of humanity. Your point of the need to align the lovely calls of Biden’s summit (and others) with how our economic systems are set up and the infrastructure we continue to build (vested interests means we always have too much inertia!), is right on the ball.

 

I suspect that the reality check will need to partly come from Academia – with quick analyses (we don’t have another 20 years to spare, actually, can’t even spare one more!), coupled with social movements and the threat of product boycotts as well as financial pressure—to get the actions needed by both public and private sectors (as well as our own).

 

Rafael

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Debra Javeline
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 10:15 AM
To: gep...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [gep-ed] RE: Opinion: We Don't Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

 

Dear colleagues,

 

Biden announced new commitments on climate action today, and it reminded me that I received not a single response to my query below about the Biden infrastructure plan.  I wonder why.  If the climate plans and the infrastructure plans are not integrated, how can the climate plans succeed?  Is no one conducting research on the ideal infrastructure for a climate-altered planet?

 

All the best,

Debra

 

From: Debra Javeline <jave...@nd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:36 AM
To: 'gep...@googlegroups.com' <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Opinion: We Don’t Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

 

Dear colleagues,

 

Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina have a compelling op-ed in the NYT, “We Don’t Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete: The long-term needs of ecosystems should come before our knee-jerk expectations about infrastructure.”

 

Is there any scholarship related to this topic?  Presumably, those focused on climate change even within Biden’s own government understand the potential harms of an infrastructure program that ignores climate issues, but is there a holistic approach, with the infrastructure people talking to the climate-concerned?  And is the conversation informed by good research on what infrastructure should be rebuilt to maximize mitigation and adaptation efforts?  Does such research exist?  Suggestions for specific publications would be most welcome.

 

All the best,

Debra

 

*****

Debra Javeline

Associate Professor | Department of Political Science | University of Notre Dame | 2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls | Notre Dame, IN 46556 | tel: 574-631-2793

 

Fellow, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Core faculty, Russian and East European Studies Program

Affiliated faculty, Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gep-ed+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/8b77e9b1c5fed4acdfcc5d8923e55a1e%40mail.gmail.com.

 

[Linda Shi]

Hi Debra, 

This is a very important point, and if it isn't answered ASAP, plenty of shovel ready projects will get built by recovery-eager local leaders. For coastal adaptation, FEMA, TNC, and many others now advocate nature-based solutions for resilience, but to my knowledge, no one has answered the question - if we don't build a seawall, we're going to need XX acres or square miles of dunes. The Lower East Side Park in Manhattan provides a cautionary example - the BIG U won Rebuild by Design's competition with a park, but in the permitting / construction drawing phase, the City decided it wasn't feasible and then proposed to demolish the existing park, lift it up several feet, and rebuild (effectively a park on a seawall rather than a nature based solution).  

I've written a perspective paper on the implications of green infrastructure for municipal finance and social justice. It cites many papers, including Mary Ruckelshaus and colleagues (below) show the limits of what wetlands can do for coastal protection. I'm all for nature based solutions - but we need to get real about what that means for what it's going to take, and it's not just an easy technological swap. 

Shi, L. (2020). Beyond flood risk reduction: How can green infrastructure advance both social justice and regional impact? Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 2(4), 311–320. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-020-00065-0 (open access)

Ruckelshaus MH, Guannel G, Arkema K, Verutes G, Griffin R, Guerry A, Silver J, Faries J, Brenner J, Rosenthal A (2016) Evaluating the benefits of green infrastructure for coastal areas: location, location, location. Coastal Manag 44(5):504–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2016.1208882

Linda

---

From: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Debra Javeline <jave...@nd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2021 1:15 PM
To: gep...@googlegroups.com <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [gep-ed] RE: Opinion: We Don't Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

 

Dear colleagues,

 

Biden announced new commitments on climate action today, and it reminded me that I received not a single response to my query below about the Biden infrastructure plan.  I wonder why.  If the climate plans and the infrastructure plans are not integrated, how can the climate plans succeed?  Is no one conducting research on the ideal infrastructure for a climate-altered planet?

 

All the best,

Debra

 

From: Debra Javeline <jave...@nd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 10:36 AM
To: 'gep...@googlegroups.com' <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Opinion: We Don’t Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

 

Dear colleagues,

 

Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina have a compelling op-ed in the NYT, “We Don’t Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete: The long-term needs of ecosystems should come before our knee-jerk expectations about infrastructure.”

 

Is there any scholarship related to this topic?  Presumably, those focused on climate change even within Biden’s own government understand the potential harms of an infrastructure program that ignores climate issues, but is there a holistic approach, with the infrastructure people talking to the climate-concerned?  And is the conversation informed by good research on what infrastructure should be rebuilt to maximize mitigation and adaptation efforts?  Does such research exist?  Suggestions for specific publications would be most welcome.

 

All the best,

Debra

 

*****

Debra Javeline

Associate Professor | Department of Political Science | University of Notre Dame | 2060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls | Notre Dame, IN 46556 | tel: 574-631-2793

 

Fellow, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Core faculty, Russian and East European Studies Program

Affiliated faculty, Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative

 

--

[Ronnie Lipschutz]

All,

This is a persisting problem in all of these analyses and plans:  if something is technologically feasible, the logistics don't matter.  For example, there is great enthusiasm for EVs in California, but no one seems to consider the sheer volume of things that have to happen, over what time frame and in what order.  The collapse of commodity chains during the pandemic and their restoration now (there are ships in SF Bay waiting to unload because port capacity is set by normal times) illustrates that the kind of surge capacity that is required--and which will require lots of materials, too--is not in place and who is going to build it?

I have not seen any academic work about this, but the military probably has done work in terms of rapid deployments (not quite the kind of infrastructures, both material and institutional, that will be needed).

Best,

Ronnie

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/5099CE0B-8ED2-49D8-9935-D0EBE78BF1F4%40hxcore.ol.

--

A fly walks into a bar and asks, "Excuse me.  Is this stool taken?"

Ronnie D. Lipschutz, President & Co-director, Sustainable Systems Research Foundation; Emeritus Professor of Politics, UC Santa Cruz

e-mail: rli...@ucsc.edu; web site: http://tinyurl.com/zeatctr

Host, "Sustainability Now!" every other Sunday on KSQD 90.7FM & KSQD.org.(Shows archived at: https://ksqd.org/sustainabilitynow/)

Read my latest book: Unhappy in Its Own Way--An Institutional Biography of UC Santa Cruz

[Roopali Phadke]

Hi All,

There is a rich international literature in STS about infrastructure and material supply chains. I've done some work on this looking at precious metals. Happy to share that with anyone interested.

I also replied to Debra directly that we are working on a study now on the re-imagining of the upper Mississippi River's infrastructure in the face of an altered climate.

Best,

Roopali

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/CAOGWZTWZb7Xc6e_yq_FqDKCk3PW7mknHCoMfr5QL1j-1ntERiw%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Dr. Roopali Phadke (she/her/hers)
Professor and Chair
Department of Environmental Studies
Macalester College
St. Paul, MN 55105

Email: pha...@macalester.edu
http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/facultystaff/roopaliphadke/

To sign up for office hours please visit https://tinyurl.com/roopaliofficehours

 

[Kate O'NEILL]

Although there isn’t much academic literature on it (at least in the social sciences), studies of construction and demolition waste definitely get at these questions (sometimes with a climate perspective). But I just took a look at the op-ed and they didn’t make the step that someone else may have pointed out: there’s no point in lauding solar fields without confronting the concrete that forms the bases of those fields, often in fragile desert ecosystems. I used to follow the work of one of my former undergrads in the Amargosa desert wilderness, threatened by a large-scale renewable energy project - and some of the efforts to come up with a compromise that protected the ecosystems (see here - published in September 2016, so no guarantees of what’s happened since… 

And here’s a piece that just popped into my mind as a “big picture” overview: Zalasiewicz, J., et al. (2017). "Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective." The Anthropocene Review 4(1): 9-22.

Best to all!

Kate 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/5099CE0B-8ED2-49D8-9935-D0EBE78BF1F4%40hxcore.ol.

[Stacy VanDeveer]

Colleagues,

The op-ed has a lovely list of ideas that might be better incorporated into policy action. The problem, for me, is the all-too-catchy and not-very-useful framing in which that list is wrapped:

1. First, it seems clear to me that we do in fact need quite a lot of concrete and steel to repair and replace some of the vast (often concrete & steel) physical infrastructure societies have now and still need -- the op-ed does not explain why/how that is not still the reality (despite the title),
2. Second, Biden and the members of the US congress (like every other democratic government one can name) are not elected by ecosystems. So for me, it seems unlikely that juxtaposing the claim that ecosystems should be first priority over “knee-jerk” infrastructure ideas is either very helpful for improving policymaking and policy proposals, or based on a fair reading of what is actually in the Biden infrastructure proposal.

 

Doubtless any existing policy and investment proposal in the real world (with existing politics and institutions) can be made much, much more sustainable or climate friendly in multiple ways, but I’m wondering what the standards are here to which real policy proposals are being held. 

The Biden administration does in fact view the infrastructure proposal and the climate proposal as integrated enough to allow for the climate proposal to be achieved and infrastructures to be improved. They may well be wrong, but I’d rely on empirical evidence and outcomes to make that determination, rather than disappointment that some of my favorite sustainability ideas did not yet get a paragraph in the bill.

 

 

-- 

Stacy D. VanDeveer

Chair, Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security & Global Governance

Professor, Global Governance & Human Security

McCormack Graduate School of Policy & Global Studies

University of Massachusetts Boston

www.global.umb.edu

 

From: Gep-Ed <gep...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "pha...@macalester.edu" <pha...@macalester.edu>
Reply-To: "pha...@macalester.edu" <pha...@macalester.edu>
Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 1:51 PM
To: Ronnie Lipschutz <rli...@ucsc.edu>
Cc: Rafael Friedmann <rfried...@gmail.com>, Gep-Ed <gep...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [gep-ed] RE: Opinion: We Don't Need More Life-Crushing Steel and Concrete

 

EXTERNAL SENDER

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/CANoPDWrsHCGtzXU6otVwZR6SBUadwPF4r3wVmN7Gg%2BfHKgnxwg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Debra Javeline]

Thank you to everyone who replied, especially those of you who suggested relevant reading!  --Debra

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/1892197C-35B9-4DE0-A774-DA5977974AB0%40umb.edu.