Alternating between New York City and the DC metro area suburbs over the course of my search for employment, I have lived and tasted the whole spectrum of America’s built environment. Ever since I started calling a two-storied Virginian mansion my (temporary) residence in January, I have transformed from an urbanophile to the not-so-native son of suburbia. My 4-door Honda Civic, though mechanical and free of blood and veins, has become a vital organ for my survival just west of the nation’s capital. Thankfully, I can keep in touch with my urban roots and replenish my once-legit street cred (note: sarcasm) by running amok in the big apple’s rat-infested subway stations. In short, dichotomy and paradox have become the defining words of my existence and lifestyle.
Despite the vast differences between Vienna, VA and New York, NY in their densities and urban forms, the two localities inevitably share an inextricable link: they are both plagued by the sweltering summer heat of the Atlantic Northeast. Oh yeah, I remembered the miserable winters (you do not forget) when I resided in Los Angeles, but memories of suffocation in the New York tube stops during the summer months eviscerated into thin air. In a series of mindless banter / texts with San Francisco-based buddy Dave in which I extolled the virtues of NYC summer living and bragged how it cannot be paralleled by that of SF’s, Dave put the nail in the coffin with “at least peeps ain’t dying due to heat waves in SF”. True, Dave, True. That stopped my yapping pronto. And for readers who are unfamiliar with the aforementioned experience in New York’s underground stations during July and August, think of steamed pork in a Chinese wok – at least that is how I feel when I wait for the L train that never seems to come.
How I feel like in the New York subway, but not as tasty.
To continue with the theme of climate and extreme temperatures, I was recently gripped by a lively discussion about climate change and current renewable energy technologies on KCRW’s “To the Point”. Unsurprisingly, experts on the panel agreed that the global agenda to promote carbon-free energy production is mired in a three-way tug-of-war between moral obligations, economic considerations, and scientific limitations. While few progressive-minded readers here would debate the urgent need to ramp up renewable energy infrastructure in both rural and urban areas, the relatively low efficiency of today’s technologies and their prohibitive upfront costs have disallowed implementation on a sufficient scale.
According to Bjørn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, the quest to green our energy sources has become a tool for manufacturers and politicians to score political points and profits. The funding for research and development into more cost and energy efficient means of energy generation, he added, is incongruent to the dollars plunged into the manufacturing of expensive instruments. “Look at the Germans. They put up solar panels everywhere despite of the high production costs of photovoltaic cells; but does that make green energy more accessible on a global scale? Unless the cost of renewable energy can be lowered to compare with that of coal energy’s, it is unlikely that countries such as China and India will sign on for the long-term. Likewise, the US government is not going to subsidize domestic solar and wind energy anytime soon.”
Although I personally do not adopt such a dim view of what countries like Germany have accomplished—they have proactively pursued paths that they believe to be the best for the environment and in the process set examples for other nations to follow—such a statement nonetheless highlights the gap between the moral ideals and economic realities of clean energy production and the need for comprehensive, long-term thinking when tackling climate change. The fact that major carbon producers of the world view each other as adversaries in the race to become top clean energy product manufacturers only adds to the siloing and fragmentation of efforts to mitigate the global problem.
Can the relevant power brokers abandon their short-term views and work collaboratively to devise accessible solutions and technologies that achieve both economic and environmental sustainability? Only time will tell.
Fellas, not everyone can afford this.
El Chinas: An urban creature's musings. 