Cities are the answer to the climate emergency.
The global influence of 21st century cities is unprecedented. In successfully driving the world economy they have become the biggest polluter of the only planet we have and are now responsible for more than 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Still mostly powered by outmoded fossil-based energy technologies, cities need to leap rapidly into the future. They need to embrace our latest bio technologies that mimic nature and jettison aging, polluting energy infrastructure. Those that move the fastest will be the most resilient to increasingly extreme weather events.
If we can rapidly decarbonise the world’s 10,000+ cities, we can successfully slow global warming.
Recently our global leaders have shown that they can act quickly in unison. Challenges to our health have been met, and overcome, as a global collective.
But the biggest threat facing humanity – the climate emergency – has not been given the same priority. Plant and animal species are disappearing at unprecedented rates, poverty is on the rise, and many cities, where most of us live, are choking.
Now is the time to build resilience.
It’s time we embraced science and viewed our cities as part of nature – as ecological systems whose survival is inextricably linked to the planet’s ecosystems.
It’s time to radically rethink and reinvent how cities are designed.
Cities can be the solution to the climate emergency.
Let’s renew our cities and change the course of history.
