Why A Post-Carbon City?

Imagine a world of darkness. You flip the light switch, but nothing happens. Electricity no longer exists because our addiction to fossil fuels has fueled us to use them up. Even the days are gloomy because the sky is blanketed with thick brown clouds of pollution. You look around and see only cement and skyscrapers. There is nothing green in sight. Forests are extinct; all were cut down to accommodate the ever-growing human population that has taken over the earth. This overpopulation coupled with overconsumption has led to extreme shortages in food and water. Sea levels have risen by 5 feet, displacing millions of families and ruining entire ecosystems. This is our future if we continue on the path we are on today. However, it's not our only option. Post-carbon cities offer us a creative strategy to avoid this bleak future.

May with no Flowers?

            Inspiration often comes, as many say, through the beauty of nature. A habitual walk through a park or spending some time in a garden really gets the juices flowing in the human brain for many people. So, I decided to try it out. I put a sweatshirt on, grabbed my umbrella (after all, it is San Francisco), and headed out of the synthetically lit dorms into…sunlight? Yes. I walked across the USF campus and down to the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. By this time, I had shed my sweatshirt and was irritated that I had not looked out my window before leaving my room. “But its April,” I thought to myself, “Surely it should be brisk, even if the sun is out.” But the more I walked, the more I realized this was a different kind of natural inspiration. Seeing the blooming cherry blossom trees along the dirt path forced a sudden realization into my head: this is the reality of climate change. This is what climate change looks like; what climate change feels like.

Carbon What?

We’ve all heard of climate change, either in the news or the classroom or everyday conversation. Still, nearly half the U.S. population isn’t sure if it’s real or if we as humans are causing it. For the scientific community, though, there is no debate: humans are changing the climate, and it will only get worse as we emit more and more greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels. But not all of us are scientists. Not all of us know the words fossil fuels or greenhouse gases and how they relate to turning on the lights or driving to the grocery store. Not all of us understand what carbon dioxide emissions are and what that has to do with temperature. Without the background knowledge needed to understand climate change, of course many of us are left puzzled, especially when the media broadcasts so many mixed messages. I will clear up that confusion by starting with the basics: the fundamental relationship between carbon and the global climate.Carbon interacts with the world around us in a variety of ways to form the carbon cycle. As a complex web of give and take between the atmosphere, ocean, land, and living things, it is an essential process that allows our habitable Earth to exist. Disturbing the carbon balance could alter the very nature of the planet we know today.

A Walk in My Shoes

It’s a usual foggy morning in early March in Marin County, a peaceful province of just over 200,000 residents nestled among rolling grass green hills north of the Golden Gate. Although the fog fails to wake my sleepy self, I push back piles of warm blankets, roll out of my twin sized bed, and muster up enough effort to strap on my no-longer-sunshine-orange-mud-caked tennis shoes for what feels like an early morning hike (mind you, it is really 10 am). With the sound of a horn loud enough to wake the entirety of my sleepy Maple Hill Drive neighborhood and the wafting smell of fresh morning coffee, I am out the door and off to meet my early riser and far too athletic boyfriend Dominic, who insists the day is wasted waking up anytime after 8 am. As I force down a slice of buttered whole wheat toast to gain some much needed energy, our oh-so-Marin County Prius drives us through the characteristic green sprawl to the zooming 101 freeway.