Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance
Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance
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DOI：
10.1162/glep.2005.5.4.122
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发表时间：
2005-11
影响因子：
4.8
通讯作者：
Kai N. Lee
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Kai N. Lee
1992年地球问题首脑会议提出的《21世纪议程》为寻求一个可持续的世界提供了第一份指示草案，在这个世界中，满足当代人的需要可能不会损害子孙后代满足其自身需要的能力。从那时起，《21世纪议程》显然是一个粗糙和不完整的图表。我们所拥有的地图集并不比大发现时代的最早地图更好，当时欧洲人在美洲和亚洲的大片土地上画满了怪物，并将其标记为“未知地带”。英国和美国的年轻社会科学家哈里特布尔奇尔和米歇尔贝齐尔分别探索了可持续发展新世界的一个重要领域：城市采取气候保护措施的方式。结果既令人失望，又令人振奋正如人们从拓荒者在陌生土地上的故事中所预期的那样。城市人口现在与农村人口相等，城市中心的能源消耗和经济产出远远超过农村。发达经济体的城市通过其居民的消费和投资选择推动全球温室气体排放，因此，在努力遏制和减缓气候变化方面，向这些地方寻求帮助是合乎逻辑的。
Agenda 21, set forth at the Earth Summit in 1992, provided a first draft of instructions for finding a sustainable world, in which meeting the needs of the present might not entail compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. As has become apparent in the years since, Agenda 21 was a crude and incomplete chart. What we have is an atlas no better than the earliest maps of the age of discovery, when Europeans filled in large stretches of the Americas and Asia with drawings of monsters and labeled them “terra incognita.” Harriet Bulkeley and Michele Betsill, young social scientists in the UK and US, respectively, have explored a significant region of the new world of sustainable development: the way that cities are undertaking climate protection initiatives. The results are both disappointing and hopeful—as one might expect from stories of pioneers in strange lands. Urban populations now equal those in rural areas, and urban centers account for far more energy use and economic output than does the countryside. Cities in the developed economies drive greenhouse gas emissions worldwide through the consumption and investment choices of their residents, and it is logical to look to these places in the effort to contain and to mitigate climate change.