Climate change, species extinction, water scarcity
Thecheckereddonutcould get more interesting and useful by adding other
sorts of sites or areas in different colors. What and where are the items, such
as the perched lake next to New Orleans or perhaps a nuclear power plant,
which normally should be avoided in an urban region under any circumstances?
Where are all the low areas subject to flooding, where wetlands may be useful to
provide valuable ecosystem services? Where are the strongest winds expected in a
hurricane? Where could protective wetlands be established against coastal storm
surges? Where could self-building sand dunes be maintained to protect against
storm effects? Where are the dangerous specific earthquake-fault-lines, such as
between hard and soft rock material? By now the donut looks complex, yet also
some disaster-prone areas and other relatively unsusceptible areas should be
evident.
Finally, for the disaster-reduction solution, add somerisk-avoidance techniques
from industry, game theory, or military strategy. For example, add redundancy
or ‘‘don’t put all eggs in one basket.” The biggest gain in risk avoidance is going
from one to two valuable objects, some benefit results from increasing to three,
and very little is gained after five. Or, diversify so that instead of having three
objects of the same type, have three different objects. Or, increasing the size of
an operation decreases the per-unit product cost up to a point, but when the
operation begins to get too big, decentralize. Or, increase the connections among
objects so that if one object or one connection fails, the system is likely to keep
going. Or, increase the number of loops or circuits in the system to provide more
alternative pathways. The list of potential disaster-reduction techniques goes on.
Some of these are useful in dealing with the sudden event, while others provide
resilience so the damage afterward is minimized. That combination should be
particularly useful for disasters such as earthquakes, bombing, and volcanic
eruption (Kreimeret al.2003).
The donut map must be pretty interesting if all these dimensions for disaster
reduction have been incorporated. Apocalypse and Armaggedon do not seem
inevitable; the planned urban-region donut provides areas for optimism.
Climate change, species extinction, water scarcity
These three big pictures highlight the gathering giant environmental
challenges before us. Under the hand of these forces the land and water we
depend on are changing, ever more rapidly, as in the upward-turning portion of
an exponential curve.
Climate change
Global climate change and its effects, especially associated with human
activities, are the subject of daily news headlines and numerous treatises. Here
theeffects on and effects of climate change are briefly mentioned, but mainly we