Be present amongst each other

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The Sustainable Hour no. 530 | Transcript | Podcast notes

Our guests in The Sustainable Hour no. 530 on 27 November 2024 are: internationally renowned architect Kevin Kennon in New York and climate activist Joe Zammit in Newcastle.

. . .

Kevin Kennon is an architect with over 40 years of experience, specialising in environmentally sustainable and innovative design, who explains to us how high rise office spaces are now being sustainably updated in New York.

Kevin has a deep understanding of architecture’s role in societal and environmental shifts. His expertise spans adaptive reuse, urban planning, and large-scale developments, with some of his projects featured in the permanent collection of MoMA in New York.

As the founder and CEO of Beyond Zero DDC, Kevin leads the development of zero-carbon emission luxury eco-resorts in remote wilderness locations worldwide, merging design excellence with ecological responsibility.

Kevin’s extensive portfolio includes projects like the 1.5 million square foot Barclays North American Headquarters, the Rodin Museum in Seoul, and multiple award-winning Bloomingdale’s stores. Additionally, he led United Architects, a finalist in the prestigious World Trade Center design competition.

He has earned over 40 international design awards and is a sought-after thought leader, contributing to discussions on urban development, climate change, and sustainable architecture. His work extends beyond architecture: as an expert witness and lecturer at leading institutions like Yale and Columbia, he brings a multidisciplinary approach to his craft.

→ To follow Kevin’s work, go to: podfol.io/profile/kevin-kennon

. . .

Joe Zammit is a climate activist based in Naarm (Melbourne). He is a member of Extinction Rebellion Westside. He is seriously concerned about the crisis and is determined to be part of the solution as he was also part of the 7,000 people who formed a caring community of climate activists in Rising Tide‘s Newcastle event for seven days, bringing three generations together to protect everything they value.

This is a climate-concerned community who just can’t accept that the world has to be the way it is today. In a time of climate breakdown, they have decided they can’t be bystanders and let the fossil fuel psychopaths destroy everything they value. In doing this, they modelled what the post carbon world could look like. Inspired by all this community spirit, hundreds of the participants took to the water in numbers unprecedented in our country to assert their democratic rights to protest the passage of coal out of the Newcastle port. This resulted in approximately 170 activists aged between 14 and 79 being arrested.

→ Here’s more information about Extinction Rebellion Australia.

. . .

In the 530th episode of The Sustainable Hour, the hosts initially discuss the pressing climate crisis, the recent global climate meetings, including the G20 and COP29, highlighting the lack of consensus and urgent need for action.

The discussion then shifts to grassroots movements like Rising Tide, emphasising community engagement and the importance of political action in upcoming elections.

The remaining part of the program explores sustainable architecture, the future of cities, and the intersection of culture and architecture – the challenges faced, and innovative solutions being implemented. The hosts and their guests share a hopeful vision for the future with a message from 2050 that inspires continued efforts towards environmental sustainability.

. . .

In the Geelong region, if you would like to meet like-minded people who are in this sort of spirit as Kevin has given us today, we are meeting on this Friday at the first, the inaugural Climate Café in Geelong at 3 o’clock in the afternoon in the centre of town.

And at the same place a week later at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, so: Friday in a week, there’s going to be a meeting of the Voices of Corangamite and Voices of Corio groups who are into politics and into seeing if they can create a movement of volunteers who supporting an independent candidate in our federal election, which is coming next year in maybe just three, four months from now.

. . .

During the Hour, we listen to The Juice Media’s Honest Government Ad about the 2025 Election, and a video message from 2050 produced by a new initiative called WeTheHopeful.

We round off the Hour with Julian Lennon’s song ‘Change’, where he pleads with and offers direction, and a Linkedin video which was posted by Gilles Toussaint – about Rachel Carson and her 1962-book ‘Silent Spring’.

. . .

“The idea of preserving what’s there instead of tearing down and building new all the time is something that I think is worth promoting. Cities have a lot of problems in terms of their impact on greenhouse gas emissions. If you count the cities in the world, New York has been one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse emissions.

Now that has dramatically changed in recent years. One of the things that I think has sustained that, is a recognition of the importance of being able to convert existing buildings into new uses and save essentially and conserve not just the real estate but the actual building itself and preserve the embodied carbon within the building.

At the same time, I think there’s this idea about conservation, which we don’t talk about a lot, but it’s something that as a human value, I think it transcends just the conversation about the environment. And it really talks about our culture, our history, our past, and our future.”
~ Kevin Kennan, architect

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts

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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we
are broadcasting, the Wathaurong People, and pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.

The traditional owners lived in harmony with the land. They nurtured it and thrived in often harsh conditions for millennia before they were invaded. Their land was then stolen from them – it wasn’t ceded. It is becoming more and more obvious that, if we are to survive the climate emergency we are facing, we have much to learn from their land management practices.

Our battle for climate justice won’t be won until our First Nations brothers and sisters have their true justice. When we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children not yet born, the generations of the future – remembering the old saying that,
**“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”**
The decisions currently being made around Australia to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How disrespectful and unfair is that?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Last year, the world agreed to phase out fossil fuels, ending new coal and accelerating energy transition. There was no similar language in this year’s final text. The message is “Bring on 3.1°C. All we have achieved as a civilization over the past 10,000 years will be lost, but at least about 1% of the population will become fabulously wealthy for a few years”.”
~ Matt Orsagh, 25 November 2024

“The only large and powerful country with anything even approaching a realistic grasp of the situation is China. While not immune to the lure of fossil fuels, China has seen past them into the era of clean energy, renewable food and regenerated lands. It is carefully positioning itself as a leader among nations which wish to avoid collapse. In this new world, ideology will be taking a back seat over the pragmatic necessities for survival. Australia, and other countries, now have to choose whether they wish to ally themselves to collapse – as exhibited by the US, Russia and Saudis – or survival, on a habitable Earth.”
~ Julian Cribb

→ Pearls & Irritations – 27 November 2024:
A triumph for greed over commonsense and humanity
“For the third year in a row the nations of the world, meeting in solemn climate conclave, have vowed to cook their children and grandchildren alive.” By Julian Cribb

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 530

Antonio Guterres, UN Chief:
Failure is not an option.

Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.

Tony:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’re in a couple of different countries today – in First Nations countries. Personally, myself and Joe are in Arapakal Country, which is in Newcastle, and Mik and Colin are in Wadawurrung Country in Geelong. So we acknowledge their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re all on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. They have accumulated a great depth of ancient wisdom, which has come from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before that land was stolen. And our aim each week is to emphasise that there is so much for us to gain as we face up to the climate crisis in working with our First Nations people, with First Nations Australians, to navigate this treacherous course that we’re on right now.

Mik:
I’m not sure whether you’ve noticed – because it hasn’t been declared officially – but the federal election is on. It’s certainly now declared ‘on’ here in The Sustainable Hour. I’m noticing videos circulated in social media, half-page ads in the local newspapers, and I’m hearing that the candidates are even out door knocking already.

So, certainly in our two seats in around Geelong, which is Corangamite and Corio, the next federal election is on. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that today. For now, I think the big big news for anybody who is interested in climate is what’s been happening in Azerbaijan where the whole world has been meeting the last two weeks. Keeping an eye on that, we have our global reporter, Colin Mockett OAM. And what do you have for us today? I’m sure it must be something from Azerbaijan.

COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes, I’ve got the wash-up from the COP-talk, but first I’d like to begin with two summit meetings because they dominate the week in climate change as we’ve just experienced it.

The major one from our perspective is in Baku in Azerbaijan where representatives from all of the world’s nations met to ‘talk about’ ways to solve the climate crisis. The words talk about are in inverted commas. More about that later, because first I’d like to report on the G20 Leaders Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which left the whole world wondering.

Because where the COP29 meeting lasted for two weeks and had representatives of each nation looking for a climate consensus, the G20 was just four days and it saw the world’s leaders meeting to look for solutions to the world’s problems. That’s the meeting you saw on television news broadcasts with world leaders wearing long brown scarves and reporters talking about stupid stuff like why Joe Biden was in the back row and how did President Xi miss out on a photo opportunity and daft stuff like that.

Well, the biggest story to come out of the G20 was that for the first time ever, the meeting closed without a final statement delivered by the host president. He was Brazilian president Lula da Silva, and he cancelled the final press conference two hours after it was due to begin. Basically because he couldn’t get any consensus at all from world leaders debating their biggest problems. These were, in order, climate change and its effects including world hunger, then how to end the two wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Now, the biggest problem colouring their talks was that nobody knows what will happen after Donald Trump takes office as the United States president in January. In short, it had all of the other world leaders holding their breath in wonder and unable to commit to any statement about what they see in the future. This G20 summit will go down in the history books, one official told the Bloomberg News Service, but definitely not as a shining example.

The big climate question displays a disparity between the U.S. and China over cutting emissions. Although the Americans still count themselves as having the world’s biggest economy, they have already effectively been overtaken by China. And China has built its position largely by manufacturing the goods and hardware needed to cut climate change emissions, and then selling them to the rest of the world.

Currently, the world’s leading CO2 emitter is China, which accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s annual emissions, while America sits at 11 per cent. After that comes India with 8 per cent and the 27 countries of the European Union, they contribute about 6 per cent.

But China is on both sides of the ledger.

According to The Economist, its emissions rose by about 6 per cent last year. About half of that came from its power sector, mainly from burning coal. Another third comes from factories, particularly steel foundries. Then comes emissions from cars and lorries. But although China is still building new coal-fired power stations, it’s installed more renewable power than any other country, and it’s using big subsidies to speed this change. Chinese companies make 90 per cent of the world’s solar cells. They make 60 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, and more than half of the world’s electric vehicles. Now that’s according to a new report in The Economist.

It’s because of China’s massive production of these things – for its own use and for export – that the move to renewables has become so much cheaper in all the other countries. The rapid increase in China’s production of renewable energy makes it likely its emissions will stop rising well before its government’s 2030 target date.

The next step would be to start reducing annual emissions in pursuit of the place to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2060. That’s what China has signed up to do, and it’s ahead of that target. And nobody can see that happening in the U.S. under Trump.

It could well be that by the next G20 meeting in South Africa next year, China will have taken over from the U.S. as both the leading economy and the world leader on climate change action.

Now, one positive to come out of the G20 was that Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto said his government plans to retire all of the nation’s coal and fossil fuel plants within 15 years to help stem global warming. The country would also add more than 75 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity over the same time frame. He also said Indonesia was aiming to achieve net zero emissions before 2050, a decade earlier than its existing target.

Now that’s something that we would have expected to be announced at the COP29 in Azerbaijan, but it wasn’t. It was announced at the Rio meeting. At COP29, most delegates seem to have agreed that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, that’s a goal agreed to at the Paris COP in 2015, that has, for all practical purposes, become impossible.

The conference heard that without a huge international effort, the chance to limit warming to 2° degrees Celsius will also soon slip away. Most of the COP29 talks were about money. Following two weeks of long, ongoing late-night talks and two days of overrun, the conference agreed at 3 o’clock in the morning on Sunday morning last that 300 billion US dollars a year would be enough to help developing nations from the effects of climate change. That’s 460 billion Australian dollars. It sounds an enormous amount – until the developing nations pointed out that it’s nowhere near enough. They also said that the world spends $6.3 billion a day on weapons – every day. Now that means that COP29 delegates reckon that helping the most vulnerable nations on our planet from global inundation is worth exactly what the world spends on weapons in 45 days.

Now, that’s the figure that the nations will debate at the next COP, which is this time next year in Brazil. And it’s likely not to have a representative from the world’s largest emitting country, the USA. That’s because Donald Trump is likely to pull out of the COP group of nations.

More on this next week, of course, but in the meantime, Forest Green Rovers, the only carbon neutral sports club in the world, played South End United last weekend away at South End’s home ground and the resulting 2-2 draw gave Forest Green a single point, leaving them still top of the ladder but now sharing that position with York City. And that’s our round up for the week.

Mik:
Today we’re switching the roles a little bit. It’s usually Tony who is introducing our guest. Today, I will be introducing Tony and our guest because you are in Newcastle as you mentioned earlier and why are you in Newcastle, Tony?

Tony:
We’re in Newcastle for… Rising Tide have got what’s become an annual event for them at this time of the year. This time last year there was another they called it a floatilla. It’s aimed at stopping coal coming out of the port. It’s the biggest coal transporting facility on the planet and no better place… and Rising Tidal are based in Newcastle and they’re becoming more and more a national organisation. They spent time travelling around the country on a road trip, talking to different communities. They’ve got hubs, I guess, as they call them, in a number of cities around the country. So it’s becoming really a national movement, and they’re connecting with other climate movements, or other parts of the climate movement, which is really encouraging.

So there would have been, I think there’s been about 5,000 people here since last Tuesday till Sunday night , There’s been events going on, workshops happening and debriefing back at the base which is quite near the harbour, on Council land. There was a very heavy police presence here, and 170 people got arrested. A number of people got towed back in. Yeah, lots of stories have come out of it, but the fact is there were that many people who were prepared to risk arrest. Police said “by no account, go outside these buoys” that they had set up, and they kept moving them closer to shore. But it did result in there were in excess of 50 hours of different actions, of different networking opportunities, of different workshops. On Sunday, they forced a coal ship to return to base, a very temporary thing, but it was taken as really significant amongst the group that they actually turned that coal ship around. And that’s what we need to do is turn all the coal ships around. We’ll be back here next year doing the same thing.

Colin:
Look, we’ve seen it all on our news broadcasts and from the point of view of an outsider looking in, it looked like the protesters were having a ball. It was like a carnival atmosphere among them and the police really did look like thugs, all in black, in black boats and being really quite threatening and violent.

In regards of the normal outsiders looking at the pictures and the images coming out from this protest, I think you would have gained an awful lot of support among the ordinary Australians. You appeared to be us, under threat from the police.

Joe:
Yes, and I think, you know, one of the main features of this is, well they call it ‘protestival’, which is a ‘protest’ plus ‘festival’ so just use the two words combine them but part of it is engaging the community the people on the fence to get more involved by creating a festival a happy atmosphere, and it was a fantastic, you know, the had music, they had food, they had a lot of incredibly positive vibe and there was incredibly successful from that point of view.

And Colin, you are right: police did come across as thugs. Some of them were thugs. And I noticed in the Daily Mirror, is it? Daily…, the local newspaper here, they had a picture of the police pulling people onto their raft in a very, very brutal manner. So, you know, this is Daily Tagged Raft. They’ve got their slant on it. You know how the police had to deal with these potential terrorists? That’s their kind of messaging. And the picture is symbolic to us because this is how the system, the police are treating us.

So, yeah, so it very powerful action. 170 people were arrested. But it was fun for all, in many respects. Kids, animals, pets – all very included. And it was, we had Peter Garrett and John Butler and many other people performing on a large stage. So the vibe was… t I feel very successful in winning over community support.

Tony:
It’s a really good example of the world we want to see. The fact that there were thousands of meals that were prepared all by volunteers. Yeah, it’s just incredible showing what communities can do when they really want to. A real community of care. There were places for people to go to where they were… say, if they felt horrible about treatment from police. They could go and debrief around that and the whole community kind of spread their arms around them. So yeah, it’s a really good place to be for the three days. And now we move on to Canberra for another part of the story and we can talk about that next week maybe. A number of things happening and if you are in Canberra, please come along.

Joe:
We need numbers. We’re strong in numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers is what we need.

JINGLE:
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.

Mik:
Language warning!

JUICE MEDIA:
The Australian Government wishes to formally congratulate President Trump on his election win. We’re sorry we called you nuts, village idiot, traitor to the West, and said you scared the shit out of us just the other day. But we promise to make it up to you by letting you dump nuclear waste and build more spy bases here. Whatever you do, please keep Kevin. We don’t want him back here either. Or Kev 3D.

But our main message today is for Australia. We’re about to have our own election. And we want to assure you that here at the Labor Party, we’ve learned the key lesson from the U.S. election, which is that if you side with corporate profits and billionaires instead of workers, renters and folks struggling to put food on the table, those folks will elect the guy who says he’ll help them, even though he also sides with corporate profits and billionaires.

So if we want to stop this malignant tuba from winning our election and implementing Project Gina, we must show we stand with you in this cost of corporate greed crisis.

We could start today by breaking up this price gouging monopoly, by making childcare free, and by wiping out all student debt. Not just 20 per cent if you re-elect us. And to show renters we have your back, we could announce a once in a generation investment in public housing. And it would still cost less than Dutto’s nuclear plan, which will take two decades to not lower your bills.

And we could pay for all that by making these guys pay their fair share of tax, by ending our billions in subsidies to them, and by scrapping this bullshit sub-deal with a country whose outgoing leader can’t remember our name, and the new one scares the shit out of us – I mean, is awesome.

Everybody says so. So we know what to do. And we know how to pay for it. So are we gonna do it? Yeah, nah. Cause we’re so far up the ass of gas companies and gambling lobbies, we couldn’t dislodge ourselves even if we tried. And neither can the malignant tuber.

But here’s the thing, Australia. Unlike these poor bastards, you don’t have to choose between red and blue. Because we have something America doesn’t. Preferential voting. Preferential voting allows you to tell the two-party system to fuck off. Cause unlike America, who were forced to choose between Shit or Shit Light, preferential voting lets you vote for a not shit candidate. One who does stand with you instead of Coles, coal and Qantas. All you need to do is put them first on your ballot before the major parties, safe in the knowledge that even if they don’t win, your shittier choices will still be counted. Which is why in Australia it’s impossible to waste your vote. So you don’t need to vote like an American.

We’re helping Australia become America by introducing laws that entrench the two-party system and make it harder for new not-shit candidates to compete with us. And we’ll try to scare you away from not-shit candidates by telling you things like, ‘You’re wasting your vote’, and ‘You’re helping DUDDO to win’, and ‘minority governments cause chaos’. But that’s just to distract from the fact that the more not-shit MPs you vote to the crossbench, the more we have to listen to you instead of Santos, Rupert and Gina. And maybe that’s just what we need here at the Australian Government. Where it’s Trump and mining companies that scare the shit out of us. Not workers, renters and young people. But with preferential voting you can embrace the MAGA movement at this election and make Australia’s Government afraid again.
Australien Government.
Authorised by the Department for counting on Australians not understanding preferential voting.
P.S. You’ll find a link in the video description with a list of Not Shit candidates. Do not click it.

Mik: (at 20:51)
The Juice Media from Melbourne published this next episode of their ‘Honest Government Ads’ in the weekend, and it already had more than 300,000 people viewing it on YouTube in the first day, where they have more than 1 million subscribers. So the word is getting out there: The election is on its way. It could happen next year in March or April or May – and the two big parties are already beginning to campaign with ads in the papers and with videos circulating in social media, and so on. And the question I think some people would be asking themselves is: will we have an independent candidate to vote for in Corio and Corangamite electorates this time around?

There is a Voices of Corio and a Voices of Corangamite group trying to gather volunteers, and they are meeting next Friday in this place called The House in the centre of Geelong. So if you’re interested in supporting that side of politics, seeing if we could have a community independent, helped by the system of preferential voting, and also helped by the fact that the bigger parties, the two big parties in Australia are losing votes – people are moving over to voting either for independents or for the smaller parties instead – that trend could actually make a big difference in an electorate like Corangamite.

We’ll keep you posted here in The Sustainable Hour about the development, because, really, this climate breakdown we’re seeing with extreme weather events getting worse and worse, it’s serious and it’s dangerous. And at the same time, we’re seeing both of the major parties happy to open up new coal mines, new gas projects… So if nothing else, we need to send a message to the Parliament that we in the community are tired of – you know – having to pay the bill. Like in Catalonia, in Spain: who’s going to pay for the 140,000 cars that were drowned in that flooding recently? The bill every time falls back on us in the community.

So get involved, get behind a candidate who genuinely is going to change this situation. This is the time to step up and get involved. There’s no bigger way you can have an influence on your future in terms of climate than when it comes to election time.

JINGLE

Tony:
Our next guest is Kevin Kennan, all the way from the Big Apple, from New York. He’s an architect and very much working in the sustainability space. So Kevin, thank you for coming on.

Kevin:
Thank you. Well, I was not born in New York City, although I lived here most of my life. I originally grew up outside of Los Angeles in a place called Palos Verdes.

Its climate actually is very similar to areas of Australia, especially the East Coast. And what’s interesting about my, I had a completely idyllic life and I lived on a peninsula called Palos Verdes, which means green sticks in Spanish. And then a little area called Portuguese Bend and a very, very, very idyllic area. And they had put a moratorium on building there. Our house was at the time, like, 30 years old, which in California lifespan is practically ancient – and beautiful. It’s a Japanese inspired, lovely house, completely surrounded by these sort of wild gardens, and there was peacocks everywhere.

But what was interesting is that it’s a very steep hilly area. And then it goes right down to the edge of the water and it has a sheer cliff, and very dramatic kind of landscape. And that there had been a moratorium on building there because about 40 years before we lived there, they had tried to install a road, and they did it in a very typical way that people did back in the 1930s and 1940s: is just kind of plow through Army Corps of Engineers type thing. And they triggered a landslide. And so half of the area was kind of slowly moving into the ocean. But what’s interesting is this sort of place that I grew up in has now recently become almost a poster child of what’s happening with the climate, because the area – of my house in particular – is at the epicenter of a massive landslide, which has been triggered in just the past few years by the sort of torrential rains that have come down in California.

We think of usually California being wildfires, just similar to Australia. And you can handle that, but the land just can’t handle that much water at a single time. So now, my house and where I grew up in is sliding at a rate of six inches a week, and they expect that the entire community will be… it already is uninhabitable, but people are staying there. And you know it’s a it’s an interesting you know the problem with what you guys are doing what i’m doing in sustainability is: people don’t feel it unless it happens to them in a sort cataclysmic way as we’ve seen with recent hurricanes. And that’s one of the biggest problems is that as we move into this Anthropocene era, it just sounds… everything sounds, the problem seems to be far away.

And it’s only until people experience it in a dramatic way that we seem to be getting any kind of traction in this, and it’s an uphill battle. But when you live through that and it’s something that’s part of your story, is now a kind of visible testament to what’s happening in the world… it makes what we’re doing in shows like this that much more important and present, you know, in a way that it’s difficult to communicate. So I applaud you guys for this effort. It is something that is… I think I’ve been affected by my entire life. So it’s really an honour to meet people in the rest of the world who feel the same way.

Colin:
Kevin, have I got it right that you are working in New York, is virtually all skyscrapers and high buildings, but you’re working on finding new designs for California where the houses are sliding because of the floods? Are you working on house designs that will combat that sliding? Or are you working on shifting the buildings and building new sustainable houses?

Kevin:
Well, no…

Colin:
Or are you designing new skyscrapers for New York?

Kevin:
I designed skyscrapers and buildings all over the world, Colin. And so I’m acutely aware of impacts that buildings have on our climate and not just the fact of the mass of the buildings and the population that’s increased and the transportation that it takes, you know, to do this, but the material cost, the movement of these kinds of materials, the effort to put into this has a cost. And it’s not just simply the cost in terms of dollars. It’s a cost in human lives. And more importantly, it’s a cost we don’t realise until the future. It’s affecting the world that we’re leaving behind.

So I’m acutely aware, and I have been… my career, actually my father was an architect also. And he was very much an environmentalist in his work. In fact, one of the very interesting projects that he did right before he passed away was the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado, which he had designed for Jimmy Carter, and which Reagan actually killed the entire project after that. But it’s quite interesting to imagine where we would be now today had that kind of effort that Carter was… a really, you know, I don’t think there were any leaders in the world at that time who were advocating for green energy. And had the U.S. invested it the way he wanted to, we would have been ahead in this effort. And now tragically, I think we’re falling way behind.

Mik:
So Kevin, let us hear what’s getting you up in the morning.

Kevin:
Yeah, well. So, the thing that I would really want to talk about is the importance in cities and the impact that cities have on greenhouse [gas] emissions. And just the fact that, you know, I think something like 50 per cent of the world’s population lives in cities today. And by 2050, it’s expected to rise about 25 per cent. Almost 75 per cent of the global population will live in cities.

And cities have a lot of problems in terms of their impact in greenhouse emissions. New York has historically been very high in the number of… If you count the cities in the world, New York has been one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse emissions. Now that has dramatically changed in the year. And one of the things that I think has sustained that, is a recognition of the importance of being able to convert existing buildings into new uses and save essentially and conserve not just the real estate, but the actual building itself and preserve the embodied carbon within the building.

At the same time, I think there’s this idea about conservation, which we don’t talk about a lot, but it’s something that as a human value, I think it transcends just the conversation about the environment. And it really talks about our culture, our history, our past, and our future. And we’re in a period right now in New York City where a number of buildings are undergoing this sort of transformation. And yes, I think that’s an important.

So, you know, as I was saying about my home – at the time being 40 years old, when we bought the house – there are different concepts of time in all this, but the idea of preserving what’s there, instead of tearing down and building new all the time, is something that I think is worth promoting.

Mik:
I can tell that from a personal perspective, Kevin, how I as a Dane, where it’s normal to come in a town and see buildings that are from the 1600s and the 1700s, and so on. I came to Australia, that’s 11 years ago now, and I was looking around and I was like: where is the history of this place? Like in Geelong, I could only see new buildings everywhere. I really felt a loss that I couldn’t sort of find the old world of Australia anymore. Having been here now 11 years, I know now where to go to find it. But it’s not obvious in the middle of the city.

Kevin:
Yeah, I know. And it’s strange to have kind of grown up in LA, which sort of has the same feel to it, which is… But now there’s a very strong movement in LA towards preserving existing buildings. And those buildings which seemed, you know, sort of strange and maybe placeless,

And now we start to understand that culture a little bit better. so fortunately, there is a strong preservationist movement in Los Angeles as well.

Colin:
We have something of a shared architectural heritage, Kevin, in that the most popular building in Geelong, the most popular homes in Geelong at the beginning of the 20th century, from the 1920s onwards, called here ‘Californian bungalows’ and they were of the Californian style, single story and they were the homes. What we’ve done in the second half of or the late 20th century in the beginning of the 21st is retrofit the things that we need to become more tuned in to today’s problem. So we put in extra cladding and insulation. We put in rooftop solar. We’ve replaced gas appliances with electric appliances. Now we know how to do that with our previous Californian bungalows. I’m interested to know how you do that with a skyscraper in New York.

Kevin:
Well, you know, the one thing that New York has now, there are a number of buildings in New York that were designed in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, New York skyscraper buildings, sort of modern style, glass, concrete, and designed for offices. And because of what happened during COVID, which is that there was a mass exodus away from office buildings… And it’s really been a dramatic impact that it’s had on the city because so much of the revenue the city has itself comes from commercial real estate. And you have all these buildings that are sort of languishing. So there is a movement now to do – essentially, what I did in New York is: to take an existing building and transform it into a residential. We also have a client housing crisis here, which I think you have in Australia as well.

And so it’s a very interesting proposition. There is about to be a resolution that’s going to make that process easier in terms of regulations. And there is money that’s kind of coming into these buildings. I think that’s the beginning of at least a market driven effort to see the value in not tearing things down, but actually just renewing what’s there.

Tony:
Is it difficult to do?

Kevin:
Well, mean, it depends on what the original building is. If it’s a sort of glass office building, 1960s style office building. What happened then is that the prevailing methodology for building those types of buildings was to essentially shrink wrap the building into a completely closed environment. it was all of the internal air flow was all done mechanically, is sort of pushing air through and filtering it and cooling it or heating it, you know, but it was all a sealed type of thing. Now, when you say convert it to living, will people naturally by, you know, through biofilia, you know, like to be able to open the window and, you know, and be able to breathe fresh air.

So, one of the things that involves is how do you convert those sealed glass envelopes into something where it breathes and potentially even allows people to go outside with terraces and things like that. So it’s complicated in the sense that you have to transform what’s there. It’s very difficult to just take a sealed box and say, you know, we’re going to stick people and live here. I mean, there are examples of it and they have very tiny windows.

But I think we’re starting to understand that cities can, we don’t have to live in sealed boxes to live in a city and we can connect with nature even if you live at sort of different levels. In fact, that’s one of the nicest things about New York, especially some of the older buildings where you have these outdoor terraces which you can go out and have views and see the city from different levels. It helps gain perspective, I think, on building. So that’s just one. other thing is that typically for offices, have a very, what we call as a very large dimension between the outside wall, the centre core of the building is for all the stairs and the elevators and all the mechanical equipment is located.

And so one methodology that solves both the problems is you just simply take off that glass skin and then you push back where the boundaries of the apartment would be and you leave that as an open space, whatever that dimension ends up being, 10, 15 feet deep perhaps. So you can take an existing building and literally just by ripping off the skin, keeping the structure the way it is, and just pushing back where the window wall is going to be and creating those sort of outdoor terraces, it automatically changes without like a huge cost. And certainly, because most of these buildings are built out of concrete, you’re certainly not damaging the environment because imagine all of the embodied CO2 that’s in that concrete structure. If we unleash that into the atmosphere, our trajectory for greenhouse emissions, greenhouse gas is essentially now going down, that would start to go back up again. So I think there are lots of reasons why this is all coming together. what’s interesting about this is that there is a movement here to make the city more liveable, and which basically means putting more trees, controlling the traffic. We were about to introduce a congestion pricing in the city that’s going to dramatically reduce the transportation in the city itself.

Well, it’s not sort of directly related to what can we do to reduce greenhouse emissions. It’s basically being driven by the market, which wants to respond to a demand, its supply and demand, and so wants to respond to the demand of living in cities that are greener and more beautiful and more human centric as opposed to just being, a sort of… general idea. It was just, want to reduce the earth’s temperature by one and a half degrees or whatever. That’s just too abstract, I think, for people to understand. But let’s say I want to put more trees here. I don’t want to reduce the traffic. Yeah, people can get behind that because that sounds like a winning strategy for living.

Mik:
We have a message coming in in our message bank – from 2050.

Kevin:
Oh!

Mik:
Listen out!

. . .

WeTheHopeful video: (at 43:28)

I really want to say thank you to all of you. Thank you for thinking of us and thank you for making the changes while you still could.

Today is the 9th of March, 2050. My name is Louise, and I live in Paris with my husband and our two children. It’s hot in the city, 37° degrees Celsius. But because of the millions of trees that your generation planted, there’s plenty of shade, and there’s lots of air, fresh air.

The extreme weather conditions are slowly beginning to stabilise. And although the Seine burst its banks twice earlier this year, because of the planning that you did, all the water was saved. No more flood victims.

We’re lucky that you saw what was going on.

Today’s economy, it’s all about green energy, thanks to the investments that you made. No CO2 emissions anymore. Global warming, it stopped.

We’ll still get extreme weather conditions sometimes, but the world is prepared for it now.

So, thank you. Thank you for thinking of us then.
Thank you for thinking of my daughters before they were even born.
Thank you for having the courage to see what was going on and to change the world.
Thank you for making a decision at the most decisive moment.

. . .

Mik: (at 45:51)
This video was produced by a group called ‘We The Hopeful’.

Kevin:
And for someone like myself, I’m so responsible for large buildings in cities, mostly, although I’m trying to do more outside of that right now – but it’s difficult for people to understand their impact, their footprint on the future. But that’s the business that I’m in. I mean, most architects have to be optimistic about the future. Otherwise, I think it would just it wouldn’t mean anything to do what I do. And I do think it’s important to be… To just tell that story, that was a beautiful way to tell it because we don’t get to see that very often. We can imagine it. And if we have children, we think of them, obviously.

At the same time, what’s interesting is to see these changes happening irrespective, I think, of larger geopolitical events or even, this is more of a granular kind of thing. And I think as long as people continue to demand a better world, there’ll be a market for it. And so I’m sort of more encouraged by that.

And the fact that a state like Texas is the largest area in the country that’s producing the most solar energy. And yet it’s probably the most conservative state in the U.S. and certainly has a big stake in fossil fuel. But yeah, at the same time, it’s interesting to see this kind of emergence of alternative energy becoming more and more sort of mainliners or mainstream type of economic activity. And I think it’s gonna continue to happen no matter who’s running the country or what their policies are. I think that’s here to stay.

Colin:
You’re listening to the voice of Kevin Kennan, who is a New York architect who’s concerned with sustainable design. You touched on it there, Kevin, but can I just ask you for your opinion as a New Yorker of what you think life is going to be like by next February when the new president or presumed president-elect Donald Trump takes over?

Kevin:
I don’t think it’s going to radically be any different. I think that the city itself, it’s an international city more than anything. And I think it has a connection to other cities around the world. So, I don’t know… I don’t see it being generally affected. It doesn’t rely as much on federal funding. It’s fairly self-sustaining.

But, at the same time, you know, it’s sensitive to larger economic forces and potentially, political forces. It certainly has a it’s a very diverse area in the city and the diversity comes from all over the world.

And if people decide that because of our integration policies, for example, that it’s really not worth it to make the effort to come here, the city itself will be one of the first places to suffer from that.

So I kind of worry about that sort of thing. I think the market forces that are working in the city right now, in terms of what I described – building, I think they’re accelerating. And I think they’ll continue to accelerate. As long as the government doesn’t really step in to do anything about that, I think that will continue to be the case. I don’t see it yet. I’m concerned, obviously, about what’s happened. I’m more concerned about America’s place in the world.

But at the same time, look at here we are, we’re talking halfway around the world. We couldn’t be more separate, I think, than we are right now. And I think that it’s because we found a new way to communicate and to be present amongst each other. And I think that’s fantastic. My greatest gift, I think I could give my children, my students, my colleagues, is the ability to go and see the world and hopefully understand the world from the perspective of the people who live in places that are completely far away. And to have that ability so that people can reach out and do that is remarkable.

Mik:
That’s all that we could fit in one architectural Sustainable Hour. And how wonderful to hear that perspective that you have on what’s going on in America. Because I think here in Australia, a lot of people simply are, almost, like, in this sort of state where [they say:] ‘I don’t want to open the news, I don’t want to hear about it’. And there’s a lot of anxiety about the future. You have calmed us down, Kevin. Because really, what’s happening to the world, all the good things that are happening, is a very strong force and it is unstoppable.

Kevin:
Yes, but you know, that’s interesting that you said that because I think people aren’t telling the good stories enough. We hear the bad, dramatic, overly dramatic, in my opinion, but I think we tend to hear that. And yet I think there has to be a constant drum beat that no matter what the noise is, you know, we’re moving. We have to. It’s not even a philosophical question. It’s a reality.

Mik:
So these are exciting things happening and it all comes down to, boils down to what you said… – I think that is an excellent exit to our program today, Kevin: ‘Be present amongst each other’.

Kevin:
Yes. Yes. Very good.

Colin:
And then be the difference.

Yes, exactly. Yes, and speak out. Exactly. We should, we should. There should be more even dissent.

Kevin:
We have to do it in a way that is respectful and we hear each other. Think that’s a lesson I think we’re beginning to understand how fundamental that is. And the election, if it teaches us a lesson, even when we maybe don’t want to hear, I think that’s key.

. . .

SONG:
Julian Lennon: ‘Change’

Don’t let them tell you
What you can and cannot do
Don’t ever let them
Take your dreams away from you
Now it’s a new world
And we’ve finally got new eyes
Now there’s a new flame
And it’s burning deep inside
So we’ll gather up our courage
For the road that lies ahead
If we don’t do this together
We’ll surely end up dead
And we’ll put the past behind us
Clean the air and clean the sea
Feed the world with human kindness
Only love will set us free

We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever
We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever

What will it take now
For us to open up our hearts
Gotta take one step
Before we fall apart
Open your eyes now
Can’t see the forest for the trees
There’s only one planet
One planet, people please
If we take away our egos
Take away the love of greed
If we clean up all our oceans
Clean the sky and plant the seed
With a forest of devotion
We can hope there’s air to breathe
There’ll be hope for one another
Love for those in need

We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever
We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever

Through the darkness
Keep on shinning
Find your sacred home
Keep believing
Love and meaning
Through these days unknown

We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
Through these days unknown
We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
Through these days unknown

We gonna change (change)
We gonna change (change)
We gonna change (change)
You and I and everyone forever
Keep believing
Love and meaning
Through these days unknown

. . .

Linkedin video posted by Gilles Toussaint

She’s hysterical? Over-emotional? Irrational? She’s a witch? When Rachel Carson published her book ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962, she faced brutal misogynistic attacks. The marine biologist researched the widespread use of pesticides. She was one of the first scientists to alert the public of the dangers. The pesticide industry did everything they could to discredit her, but her extensive research prevailed. It was key testimony in hearings against pesticide use and sparked major pesticide restrictions in the US. Her book is often cited as the catalyst for the environmental movement. Despite all the ugliness she faced, Carson continued to see beauty in the world. She inspired a new way of thinking, one where humans coexist with nature rather than dominate it. Now, more than ever, we need to fight for nature. Her fight continues through each of us. We owe it to her and our future to keep pushing forward.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour

Events in Victoria

The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.

Petitions

“Stop Geelong Incinerator”
You could help by adding your name. The goal is to reach 500 signatures.
→ Read more and sign the petition here

→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name

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Live-streaming on Wednesdays

The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).

→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, click here – or go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen Live’ on the right.

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Podcast archive

Over 550 hours of sustainable podcasts.

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows as well as special Regenerative Hours and Climate Revolution episodes in full length.

→ Archive on climatesafety.info – with additional links
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