Earth Day 2020

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day. It happens to be the fiftieth Earth Day and thus deserving some retrospection. How much progress toward protecting our one and only home planet have we made during the past half-century? The answer to this question is both a lot and that we have much to do. As an architect, I wonder whether my profession is doing enough—quickly enough—to help make a difference. 

Plenty of evidence suggests we have already crossed the critical threshold toward large-scale climate change. This threshold is the tipping point past which the Earth’s temperatures will continue to rise regardless of anything we do. The changes caused by the exponential acceleration of global warming will be immense and rapid, so much so they will quickly dwarf all other concerns. The upshot is the world as we know it will soon no longer exist. 

Appropriately, action on climate change is the topic for Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. It is the biggest challenge to the future of our species and the life-support systems that make our world habitable. 

We have seen encouraging changes in attitudes and policies, with significant progress on many fronts since the first Earth Day in 1970. Awareness about how human activities have adversely impacted our complex ecosystems is now widespread. Today, most people understand the importance of protecting the environment. The problem is the accelerating urgency of the issue and the growing magnitude of a necessary response to minimize the calamitous degradation of natural systems. The rollback of numerous protections by the Trump administration is damaging and plainly adding fuel to the fire. Less egregious but nonetheless unhelpful is the tone-deaf promotion by Architectural Record of lavish homes in pristine settings for the one-percenters in its annual Record Houses issue; the magazine’s editors fiddle as Rome burns. 

The following is an excerpt from an article written in 2008 by David Fahrenthold for the Washington Post: 

“. . . But even with "green" becoming nearly as common as "lite" on supermarket labels, some environmental historians say they wonder what it is all adding up to. They worry that the activity will give the illusion that major environmental problems are being solved when, in fact, many remain intractable. 

"Earth Day today is really much more like Mother's Day, or maybe Martin Luther King Day," said Adam Rome, a professor of history at Penn State University. "It's a once-a-year day to think about some things or maybe do a little something," he said, not the call for major life change and political action that it was in 1970.” 

To emphasize, Fahrenthold (whose focus today for the Post is covering the Trump family and its business interests) wrote and quoted these words 12 years ago—twelve years that have gone by much too quickly. Anticipating how impactful the changes to our lives need to be and the level of necessary political action is imperative. 

Various outlets have characterized the COVID-19 crisis as a dress rehearsal for the climate emergency. The pandemic has dramatically and suddenly confronted everyone with a common, immediate threat. We’ve all been affected. Some believe the world’s response to containing the virus has revealed a silver lining: a promising resilience and potentially an openness to a complete and drastic change in the way we lead our lives. Perhaps people everywhere are ready for a transition toward truly sustainable societal systems and economic models. At our core, we humans are adaptable survivors, though inclined to stasis until existentially threatened. 

This brings me back to the question of whether architects like myself are in fact working toward scalable solutions capable of mitigating the worst effects of climate change. To my profession’s credit, we have been at the forefront of numerous initiatives that have led to legislated protections for the environment. We have also spurred the introduction of green rating systems and sustainability-focused building technologies, which have forever changed the construction industry. Additionally, many architects and firms have committed to designing with carbon-neutrality in mind. The AIA and other organizations staunchly support the 2030 Challenge and the incorporation of technical solutions to achieve carbon-neutral goals. 

The problem is the current trajectory of planetary climate change cannot be reversed. The bottom line is our lives and our civilization will be impacted in unimagined ways. A thin application of “green” paint may make us feel better about ourselves but will not make the problem disappear. At best, we may be able to forestall the most ruinous outcomes by a few years. The challenge goes far beyond simply achieving carbon-neutrality in our buildings. Architects must envision a future world in which our lives will be dramatically and irrevocably transformed by the effects of climate change. 

That future, climactically unstable world is imminent. We’re already experiencing an increasing number of extreme weather events. Oceans are becoming hotter and more acidic, devastating marine life. Droughts are ravaging agriculture around the globe; conversely, rising sea levels will soon make many coastal communities unlivable. Temperate forests are vulnerable to damaging infestations and fires. Human life and prosperity will increasingly suffer; resource scarcity will spur massive migrations of climate refugees, in turn threatening regional stability and inciting virulent xenophobia. We’re witnessing the dystopian future envisioned by some science fiction writers become our reality. 

The climate crisis demands systemic changes to how we all live our lives: how we work, how we engage in trade, how we feed ourselves, and how and what we build. The building part is the arena within which architects will contribute toward solutions to complex, unfolding changes we can hardly comprehend. The profession needs to do its best to anticipate what those systemic changes are and what they mean for the future of architecture. 

We can adapt to change—we’re doing it now in the face of an unprecedented threat. It’s a matter of will, leadership, and ingenuity. Utopia may not await us if we’re “successful,” but we will not have presided over the demise of civilization either. 

As Earth Day’s organizers have proclaimed, the enormous challenges—but also the vast opportunities—of action on climate change have distinguished the issue as the most pressing topic for the 50th anniversary. If we’re seriously paying attention, climate change and its consequences should preoccupy our concerns on every day of the calendar.