29 November 2009

Another Look at Sustainability

As human society seeks to clean its urban centers and adopt more sustainable technology, it fails at addressing the problem of pollution entirely. It is often the assumption that dense urban areas are the source of pollution worldwide. Instead of being measured by the amount of pollution generated within it, a city should be measured by the amount of pollution generated for it.

J.R. McNeill asserts that rapid urbanization is the source of human stress on the environment. Yet, to many city dwellers in the rich nations of Western Europe and North America, cities have dramatically reduced their environmental impact on the local community. McNeill explains that “urban impacts [extend] beyond city limits to hinterlands, to downwind and downstream communities, and in some respects, the whole globe” (McNeill, p 287). Waste disposal and power generation have been relocated far away from their users. The materials used to build and manage cities are also being created elsewhere in cities with less strict regulations. Externalization of pollution allows city dwellers to experience the benefits of pollution caps, but only sweeps the problem under the carpet.

David Satterthwaite writes about the correlation between pollution management and urbanization. The most polluted cities, “are the smaller and less-prosperous cities in lower-income countries or in the lower-income regions of middle-income countries” (Satterthwaite, p 217). He questions the assumption that growth means more pollution and reveals that current pollution regulations lead to “transferring costs to other people or ecosystems” (Satterthwaite, p 216). These lower income cities lack political will to regulate polluters due to a focus on rapid industrialization or capital (Satterthwaite, p 222). Wealthier cities develop more strict regulations than lower income cities in developing countries. The latter manage and create the pollution for the former.

Wealthy cities, such as San Jose, need to stop externalizing pollution. Cities need to bring back their industries—not so that they have to deal with air and water pollution again, but that their pollution is regulated to their own standard and the lower income cities will not bear these burdens for them.

Sources
  • McNeill, J. R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. W. W. Norton & Company Inc. 2000
  • Satterthwaite, David. "Environmental Transformations in Cities as They Get Larger, Wealthier and Better Managed". The Geographical Journal, Vol. 163, No. 2, Environmental Transformations in Developing Countries (Jul., 1997), pp.216-224

1 comment:

  1. Although I agree that cities should be responsible for their pollution instead of off loading the problem to some not so distant locale, this argument does not address the needs of the low income cities and why they are wiling to the risk environmental and health consequences of bringing dirty industry to town. If San Jose brings its industry and pollution back, what will Low Income City do for industry, money, survival?

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