Reflections from a Sustainability Study Day

This week, I was published on the ICE Civil Engineer blog explaining how engineers can use our development action plans and CPD records to grow our own careers and serve society better. I have written previously about the challenges within my discipline to adapt to the increased frequency and impact of extreme weather events, as illustrated in this article from Iain McKenzie reflecting on the challenges of maintaining earthworks for Welsh roads (“Can we make it rain less in Wales, or maybe flatten out some of those pesky mountains? If not, are we headed for a managed decline in performance?")

But when engineers talk about climate change, we have a tendency to focus on adapting to its effects rather than addressing the root cause, so a key objective for me this year is to improve my understanding of low carbon and energy saving solutions which are applicable to the rail sector.

Mental Models of the Underworld

This is the first in a series of posts inspired by the Bryan Lovell Meeting at the Geological Society, 24th to 25th Nov 2016. More details here

At the end of two days talking about watery hazards such as flooding, drought, landslips and sinkholes came a session focused upon communication skills to explain those risks to the people who are affected by them. But there's a catch: it's not enough just to use what you think are simplified words in place of your usual engineering or geological jargon. First, you need to establish whether you have any concepts in common to which you can refer!

The Perfect Storm? Climate Change, Flooding and Resilience

Following the flooding across Yorkshire over Christmas, this week I'm speaking at a panel debate in York entitled "A Perfect Storm: Climate Change, Cuts and Floods", bringing a civil engineering perspective to a national (and international) problem. Come and join us at 7.30pm on Thursday 18th Feb, Quaker Meeting House, Friargate. 
So how can I summarise in a ten minute opening speech (alongside contributions from a climate expert, a flooded resident and a firefighter) what are the most important things we need to do to become more resilient to flooding, and are we doing them? Well, as I've written in my earlier posts, to consider a problem holistically I like to start from first principles. So here is the flooding problem as we face it in the UK: 

1) Rain falls out of the sky (and more rain is coming)
We live on an island next to the Atlantic Ocean, which is warming up as a result of climate change. The prevailing wind blows warm wet air over the UK, depositing its moisture as it goes (especially on the west side of the Pennines - sorry Cumbria!). My gut feeling in December was that something was seriously wrong with the weather and our infrastructure was likely to suffer the consequences. The Met Office confirmed this as the average temperature over the month of December was 8.0 degrees, a whopping 4.1 degrees higher than the long term average of 4 degrees and much larger than the previous record (6.9 degrees in 1934). 
Warm winters usually mean wet and windy ones, as storms blow in off the sea and this winter has been unusual, but not unexpected given what we know about climate impacts. Therefore, while we cannot control the weather itself, we do have a choice about limiting our carbon emissions now to prevent making it worse. 

ICE Triennial #1: On Desmond and Destruction

It was a dark and stormy night...

So I began my blog two years ago in December 2013 telling my engineer's tales of how climate change is affecting UK infrastructure through storms, floods and landslides. This week, as the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris have worked through many stormy nights (literal and metaphorical) to try and hammer out a deal, the ICE hosted the Triennial Summit with the American and Canadian societies of civil engineers, a conference about resilience, climate and meeting the infrastructure needs of the future for cities around the world.

A review of 2013/14
2013/14 was a bad winter for the railways, as I wrote about in more detail a few months later in March 2014, when it had been confirmed as the wettest three month period in UK history in some places. The railway at Dawlish was wrecked by ferocious waves caused by the St Jude storm's high winds, cutting off rail access to Cornwall and it was only reopened in time for Easter.
There were over 100 landslides on the rail network, including several places like the Hastings line where multiple incidents happened on the same line. A presentation by a rail engineer for Kent at the Yorkshire Geotechnical Group in May told a sorry tale of fighting the elements to get the lines reopened again, but in some cases it took many weeks because it was impossible to get materials in or out by rail where the line was blocked in both directions.

For the Love of Malawi: Why I'm Fasting for Climate Action

Buildings at Maoni Orphanage damaged by flooding

Last month, climate change got personal. This year I have been fasting on the first of every month in solidarity with the victims of climate change, from the Philippines to Vanuatu but it was the stories from my friends in Malawi which have absolutely broken my heart. This year, Malawi and Mozambique have been hit by serious flooding on a scale rarely seen before in the country’s history. 
 
Two members of my church (Acomb Methodist Church) run a charity called Madalitso providing education and training for young people in Malawi, and almost everything has been destroyed. The orphanage we fundraised for ages to help build has been damaged (see photo), and thousands of people have lost their homes, possessions and crops. Celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight in York, we watched a film telling the stories of two tea farmers in Malawi, who have also found their farms devastated by the floods.

Low Impact Living in Leeds: Three Stories

Yesterday I spent a great day visiting three friends in Leeds trying to live more sustainably in different ways. The day was sparked off by Isabelle, who has decided to take up the new year challenge I set myself in 2014 and measure her carbon footprint so I took along some resources I had found useful including George Marshall's book Carbon Detox.

This was also an opportunity to see her newly insulated house, having followed her blog (with photos!) describing her efforts and lessons learned.

Thinking Long Term: Why "Doing it for the kids" is not good enough

Principle 3: Intergenerational Stewardship (or Thinking Long Term)

This post examines the concept of intergenerational stewardship, the 3rd principle of sustainable infrastructure (see the introduction to this series inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”).

We don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children (Anon)

The concept of protecting the earth for our children has been one of the key ways that people have understood the environmental movement over the last 30 years. It has been posited that as a direct appeal to people's emotions, this is a strong motivation for people to act. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't seem to support this view.

Putting it into practice 1: How do we live within our limits?

This post is part of a series inspired by the book "Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice" (see the introduction to the series here). Having examined the issue of planetary boundaries (Principle 1) in my last post, how can we put this knowledge into practice in real civil engineering situations? 

Two "operational" rules of thumb are proposed to ensure that all our buildings, transport etc protect rather than damage our planet's capacity to support life:

1.1: Set targets and measure against environmental limits
"If you can measure it, you can manage it"

Living within our limits: Exploring Planetary Boundaries

Sustainable Infrastructure - Principle 1. Environmental Sustainability - Living Within Our Planet's Limits 

This post explores the concept of planetary boundaries, the first principle of sustainable infrastructure (see the introduction to this series inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”).

Environmental Capacity:   

Sustainable development has often been described as the "triple bottom line" of financial (or economic), social and environmental impacts, with a lovely Venn diagram showing these three ideas working in harmony. However, this doesn't reflect the relative importance of the three elements: cost or economic benefits are usually considered to be the main driver for development, but there's little point having lots of money if the result is destroying the capacity of our one and only planet to support life! 

A Fossil-Free Nativity

This year I'm singing in two very different productions of the Christmas story. I've written previously about Holy Boy, a choral nativity we're perfoming in York on 21st December. Yesterday I took part in a fossil-free nativity play outside Methodist Central Hall, next to Westminster Abbey, calling for the Methodist and Anglican churches in the UK to follow the lead of the World Council of Churches and divest from fossil fuels. 

If there is no home for nature..

If there is no home for nature

There will be no evening starling chatter,

Nor swifts left to soar.

There will be no hedgehogs nestled in your garden,

No woodlands to explore.

Spring will pass without a bluebell,

And June without a bee.

Butterflies will flounder without a flower,

And the birds without a tree.

If there’s no home for nature,

The wonders on our doorstep will diappear.

There will be no place to play,

No meadows. No moorlands. No wilderness. No adventure.

If there’s no home for nature,

There will be no nature.

This poem was printed in the Guardian last week, and struck me to the core, the last couplet ringing in my ears long after I had read it.

Climate Politics: Where Are We Now?

Addressing climate change requires international as well as local solutions, which means co-operation and negotiation on a grand scale. The scientific community has been doing this very well: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988, and has been called the largest international scientific undertaking in human history, with thousands of experts involved from around the world in the task of examining peer-reviewed technical literature and publishing the results to advise policymakers. Over the years, the language in the reports has grown stronger and stronger as the scientific consensus has grown more and more confident, to the point that the 4th report published in 2007 could state baldly that:

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising sea levels”.

However, the policymakers' response to the ever-growing body of evidence that the climate is warming and that human activity is responsible has been essentially: “La la la, I'm not listening”

Towards a Sustainable Railway - Part 2

A few weeks ago, I met an environmental consultant who told me about a small architectural practice which he had helped to implement an environmental management system accredited under ISO14001 – but this ONLY related to their office environment, not their project work. I'm not sure which of us was more surprised by this conversation: me, that any company could be stupid enough to think that recycling the office's waste paper is 'doing enough' while failing to address energy efficiency and waste in the buildings they design, or him, when I told him that no public sector client would ever employ a consultant engineering firm in today's marketplace who doesn't have an effective EMS for their projects.
But sometimes I wonder if we have allowed this to put sustainability in a box.