Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and the Limits of Ecological Modernisation

Abstract

The diffusion of urban development results in higher emissions of global warming gases, especially carbon dioxide, because urban sprawl results in higher energy use in transportation and the heating and cooling of spacious homes on the urban periphery. The techniques and politics underlying the diffuse urban form were pioneered in the United States in the late nineteenth century, where landowners and developers sought to use mechanised forms of transportation to increase the value of their land holdings. Today, leading international business organisations seeking to curb anthropogenic climate change gases do not attempt to reform sprawled urban landscapes, but instead promote technological reforms that would allow sprawl to continue. This is because urban sprawl pushes up demand for such consumer durables as automobiles and household appliances. In this article the author describes how the techniques of urban sprawl were developed and championed politically by landholders and developers in the US. The author also describes the perils and limits in relying on technology to abate anthropogenic climate change gases.

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Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and the Limits of Ecological
Modernisation
George A. Gonzalez a
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To cite this Article Gonzalez, George A.(2005) 'Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and the Limits of Ecological
Modernisation', Environmental Politics, 14: 3, 344 — 362
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Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and
the Limits of Ecological Modernisation
George A. Gonzalez
Department of Political Science, University of Miami Coral Gables, FL, USA
ABSTRACT The diffusion of urban development results in higher emissions of global
warming gases, especially carbon dioxide, because urban sprawl results in higher energy
use in transportation and the heating and cooling of spacious homes on the urban periphery.
The techniques and politics underlying the diffuse urban form were pioneered in the United
States in the late nineteenth century, where landowners and developers sought to use
mechanised forms of transportation to increase the value of their land holdings. Today,
leading international business organisations seeking to curb anthropogenic climate change
gases do not attempt to reform sprawled urban landscapes, but instead promote
technological reforms that would allow sprawl to continue. This is because urban sprawl
pushes up demand for such consumer durables as automobiles and household appliances. In
this article the author describes how the techniques of urban sprawl were developed and
championed politically by landholders and developers in the US. The author also describes
the perils and limits in relying on technology to abate anthropogenic climate change gases.
Most researchers examining the politics of global warming have focused on
interest group politics to explain the failure to negotiate an adequate
international regime (Miles et al. 2002) to reduce anthropogenic emissions of
climate change gases. The US oil sector has been particularly active in
prodding both the Clinton and Bush administrations to obstruct an effective
international regime designed to reduce global warming emissions (Victor
2001; Brown 2002; Lisowski 2002).
Newell and Paterson (1998) take a different tack. They offer a ‘political
economy approach rooted broadly in historical materialism’ (Newell and
Paterson: 679), and hold that the international politics of climate change must
be understood within the larger context of the capital accumulation process.
Specifically, they contend that the profits derived by the international oil
industry are important to global economic and political stability. As a result,
governments on both sides of the Atlantic have given oil firms privileged access
to and dominant influence over the international efforts to establish a global
warming regime.
Correspondence Address: George A. Gonzalez, Department of Political Science, University of
Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124-6534, USA. Email: ggonzal2@miami.edu
Environmental Politics,
Vol. 14, No. 3, 344 – 362, June 2005
ISSN 0964-4016 Print/1744-8934 Online/05/030344–19 ª2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0964410500087558
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Thus Newell and Paterson point to the economic and political importance of
fossil fuel industries to explain the failure to develop decisive international
regulations on climate change. Nevertheless, they underestimate the centrality
of fossil fuel use to the ‘health’ of global capitalism. Inexpensive energy
provided by fossil fuels is the key to the US model of urban development. This
model is centred on urban sprawl. Urban sprawl brings numerous economic
benefits, such as increasing land values, expanding markets for automobile
manufacturers and gasoline producers, as well as increasing employment in
construction. Urban sprawl, however, creates higher energy demand for
transportation, for the heating and cooling of spacious homes on the urban
periphery, and for the running of appliances in single family homes in
suburban neighbourhoods (Low et al. 2000; Pinderhughes 2004). The urban
sprawl system is economically viable because fossil fuels are so abundant and
so inexpensive that increasing demand in the immediate term does not translate
into prohibitively higher energy prices (Baker et al. 1995; Roberts 2004).
The US system of urban sprawl is the result of politics and public policies.
Initially, this mode of urban development was politically championed by
landowning interests who sought to bring utility to their land holdings, and
hence substantially increase their exchange value (Logan & Molotch 1987;
Weiss 1987). As a result, US urban areas are the most sprawled on the globe
(Kenworthy & Laube 1999). Because of this, the US is the highest absolute
emitter of carbon dioxide, and the highest per capita emitter (Revkin 2001;
Houghton 2004: ch.10; Lanne & Liski 2004).
1
Automobile manufacturers, gasoline producers, utilities, and the makers of
home appliances came to rely on the sprawled urban form to create and expand
markets for their products. With urban sprawl a key to global economic
growth and stability, the leading business-led policy groups seeking to curb
global warming – the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
and the International Chamber of Commerce – have limited their advocacy to
pressing for the development of technology to abate and/or capture greenhouse
emissions, and/or develop energy sources as abundant and inexpensive as fossil
fuels, but presumably more environmentally benign. Hence, the approach to
climate change of these international business groups, led by a number of large
global firms, is the weak form of ecological modernisation. In other words,
these groups propose to reform the operation of capitalism through the
development and deployment of technology rather than by promoting
environmentally sensitive land management planning techniques that would
directly and assuredly abate greenhouse gases and other deleterious airborne
emissions (Pinderhughes 2004) as would be required by a strong form of
ecological modernisation (Christoff 1996; Gonzalez 2005).
The analysis offered here of the politics of urban sprawl, climate change, and
ecological modernisation is consistent with the business dominance view of the
policy-making process whose advocates contend that producer groups and
economic elites are at the centre of public policy formation (Barrow 1993: ch.1;
Gonzalez 2001a; Domhoff 2002; Robinson 2004).
2
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The History of Urban Sprawl
The sprawl pattern of urban development originated in the US from the efforts
of locally-oriented economic elites. Together these comprise what Logan and
Molotch (1987) refer to as local growth coalitions (also see Jonas & Wilson
1999). At the core of these coalitions are large land holders and developers who
seek to maximise the value of their land by attracting capital investment,
tourism, and other forms of economic activity to their region (Savitch &
Kantor 2002), and by bringing utility to their specific parcels of land by making
their land accessible to means of rapid transportation. Thus, real estate
interests in the US have historically sought to increase overall economic
activity in their region, and have also sought to increase the value of their land
by bringing it within reach of the regional, and in turn, the international
economy. In this way, parcels of land become valuable as residential housing,
retail outlets, commercial office space and/or industrial parks. It is the practice
of making land accessible to means of rapid transportation that has resulted in
the pattern of sprawl that characterises most large US cities. Other members of
local growth coalitions include owners of local banks, utilities, local media
outlets, as well as attorneys specialising in real estate transactions, who
promote and benefit from economic growth in their locality because growth
expands the local consumer base (Bowles et al. 1983).
The Trolley and Urban Sprawl in the US
The sprawling of urban development in the US began in earnest with the
advent of the electric streetcar (tram), or trolley, in the late nineteenth century.
Other forms of transportation were then too slow (the horse-drawn carriage),
too expensive (the cable car), or too noisy, polluting, and inefficient (the steam-
powered locomotive) for use as mass transportation in an urban setting
(McShane 1994).
The trolley had none of these liabilities. It was relatively fast and inexpensive
to deploy and run, and was largely noiseless and non-polluting. Additionally,
unlike steam locomotives, trolleys could efficiently stop and start within short
distances. These factors meant that the trolley was ideal for rapid mass transit
in urban settings. Thus, soon after its successful demonstration in Richmond,
Virginia in 1887, trolleys were used in numerous urban areas throughout North
America, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Toronto, and
Milwaukee (Warner 1978; Cheape 1980; Foster 1981; Barrett 1983; McShane
1994; Fogelson 2001: ch.2).
In North America, trolley systems were used in large part to bring utility to
land that had previously been beyond walking distance from city centres where
virtually all economic activity took place (Schultz 1989). Thus ‘in the late
nineteenth century, real estate interests and trolley promoters combined to
develop huge areas of Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, and many other large cities’
(Foster 1981: 17).
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In Los Angeles, a highly diffuse urban region (Fulton 2001), the area-wide
trolley system was also established to realise profits from real estate. Edward
Huntington, during the turn of the century, invested the bulk of his inherited
$50m fortune in far-flung land holdings throughout the Los Angeles region,
and developed the trolley firms Pacific Electric and the Los Angeles Railway to
bring utility to them. When Los Angeles trolley cars finally disappeared in
1961, ‘they left a sprawling City of Southern California built precisely as it was
because the rail lines had encouraged just that development’ (Crump 1988:
115–116).
In cities throughout North America trolley firms were pressed to expand into
the urban periphery. Real estate interests, in particular, lobbied hard for the
extension of trolley lines, sometimes donating land and subsidising the costs of
their construction in order to obtain lines near their holdings (Cheape 1980;
Jackson 1985: 135; McShane 1994).
In western and central Europe the impetus and economic backing for the
establishment of city-wide trolley systems was mostly provided by the
manufacturers of trolley equipment (McKay 1976). The owners of European
trolley systems sought to profit from the efficient and effective operation of
their systems, and by the regular maintenance and modernisation that
financially healthy trolley firms can undertake. This was in sharp contrast to
the North American case where many key trolley ventures were undertaken not
to realise profit from the successful operation of trolley systems, but
predominantly from the increase in land values brought about by proximity
to trolley lines.
European trolley firms also faced significantly different political milieux than
did their North American counterparts. In North America, substantial political
pressure was placed on trolley firms to extend their lines into low-density areas.
Such extensions were generally unprofitable, and played a key role in
undermining the financial position of trolley firms, preventing them from
providing for routine maintenance and modernisation (Dewees 1970; Foster
1981; Barrett 1983; Bottles 1987). In Europe, governments largely used their
political leverage to improve trolley service for users (McKay 1976).
With European trolley firms seeking profit largely through the operation of
their lines, and a political environment that prioritised efficient and effective
transportation, streetcar systems in Europe expanded much more conserva-
tively than in North America (McKay 1976; Yago 1984). With the advent of
the automobile as a mass consumer item, North American land developers’
efforts to sprawl urban development went into high gear.
Urban Planning, the Automobile and US Urban Sprawl
James Flink’s (1990) seminal history of the automobile revolution in the US
emphasises technological, organisational, and marketing innovations. Political
factors, however, were just as important. It was a political movement that
prompted the development of the roads and urban planning that made the
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automobile a practical reality for urban dwellers in the US. Members of local
growth coalitions politically initiated and sponsored the physical and legal
changes to the urban milieu that allowed the automobile to operate effectively.
These physical and legal changes, predicated on the advent of the automobile,
facilitated the sprawl of urban development in the US.
Weiss (1987) points out that ‘subdividers who engaged in full-scale
community development . . . performed the function of being private planners
for American cities and towns’. He explains that
the classification and design of major and minor streets, the superblock
and cul-de-sac, planting strips and rolling topography, arrangement of
the house on the lot, lot size and shape, set-back lines and lot coverage
restrictions, planned separation and relation of multiple uses, design and
placement of parks and recreational amenities, ornamentation, ease-
ments, underground utilities, and numerous other physical features were
first introduced by private developers and later adopted as rules and
principles by public planning agencies (Weiss 1987: 3).
Many of the largest and most innovative land developers ‘did more than just
serve as innovators for the land planning ideas that were spawned in the early
1900s, and spread rapidly during the succeeding four decades’. Instead, many
‘played a direct role in actively supporting and shaping the emerging system of
public land planning and land-use regulation’ (Weiss 1987: 4). They did so in
conjunction with policy-planning groups (Barrow 1993: ch.1; Domhoff 2002) –
leading examples include the Home Builders and Subdividers Division and
City Planning Committee of the National Association of Real Estate Boards
(NAREB). Most of those large developers involved in shaping government
regulations on land use during the early twentieth century ‘developed stylish
and expensive residential subdivisions and were leaders’ of this division and
committee within NAREB. Significantly,
beginning in 1914, a group of community builders from NAREBS’s City
Planning Committee exchanged ideas with the landscape architects, civil
engineers, architects and lawyers who predominated in the National
Conference of City Planning (NCCP), founded in 1909. Together, these
community builders (i.e., large scale land developers) and NCCP activists
worked to promote planning legislation among other entrepreneurs, in
the real estate industry, to the general public, and within the state and
local governments (Weiss 1987: 56).
Large land developers sought to shape public policies on land use issues
because
private developers who scrupulously planned and regulated their own
subdivisions needed the planning and regulation of the surrounding
348 G. A. Gonzalez
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private and public land in order to maintain cost efficiencies and
transportation accessibility and to ensure a stable and high-quality,
long-term environment for their prospective property owners (Weiss
1987: 4).
One of the key factors prompting large-scale community building and the
subsequent drive for private and public urban planning was ‘the increasing
availability of private automobiles for upper- and middle-income (home)
purchasers’ (Weiss 1987: 62). Hence, the accommodation of the automobile in
urban and suburban areas became central to reorganising urban areas and
organising new suburbs (Barrett 1983; Hise 1997; Weiss 1987).
Land developers in the Los Angeles region led the way. Its sparse
population, the fact that developers could purchase large tracts of land
relatively inexpensively, and the sprawling trolley system, meant that Los
Angeles was ideal for large-scale community developments by individual
developers. As a result, many urban-planning techniques and public policies
were initially developed and applied in Los Angeles (Hise 1997; Weiss 1987).
Los Angeles developers, at the cutting edge of community development
methods, were quick to see the profit potential in the automobile, and planned
and developed accordingly. The effects on Los Angeles were profound. ‘Pre-
World War (I) residents were so dependent upon the trolley for transportation
that developers made few attempts to promote single-family homesites more
than a half-mile from the lines’ (Foster 1975: 476). The declining expense of the
automobile and growing public confidence in it (Flink 1990) ‘exerted a
dramatic effect on the remote areas which were not so well served by the
trolleys. . . . The real estate boom of the 1920s witnessed the promotion of
thousands of lots, many located miles from the nearest trolley lines’ (Foster
1975: 477).
By the end of the 1920s, Los Angeles had become the US region most
adapted to the automobile, and ‘there were two automobiles for every five
residents in Los Angeles, compared to one for every four residents in Detroit,
the next most ‘‘automobile oriented’’ American city’ (Foster 1975: 483).
Historians of Los Angeles interpret these statistics as demonstrating a
particular affinity for the automobile among the city’s residents (Fogelson
1967; Bottles 1987). More likely, much of the new affordable housing stock was
constructed in areas only accessible by automobile. Moreover, as businesses
responded to the increasing mobility of suburban residents, employment, retail
outlets, and services were increasingly offered away from areas serviced by
trolleys (Fogelson 1967, 2001; Foster 1975; Hise 2001), creating further
incentives to automobile ownership.
One factor prompting sprawling urban development in many US urban
areas was the positive opinion local businesspeople had of horizontal growth.
The Chicago business community generally supported the use of the
automobile and the outward expansion it brought (Barrett 1983). Blaine
Brownell writes that
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[southern] businessmen lauded the automobile because it promised to
open up new channels of commerce, expand the pool of customers for
downtown merchants, and make available large expanses of outlying
territory for urban growth and economic development . . . the Good
Roads Movement in the South, and throughout the country, had always
received the support of prominent business groups, and in the 1920s most
chambers of commerce in the larger cities established committees
especially charged with the task of promoting highway construction
and the repair of existing roads (Brownell 1975: 117).
and Howard Preston states that: ‘By 1915 the legions of good roads apostles in
the South were swollen with chamber of commerce members, bank presidents,
sales representatives, real estate agents, and trade board members’ (Preston
1991: 41).
Certain US public policies tend to facilitate/promote sprawl, whereas public
policies in Europe tend not to (Nivola 1999). In the US, governments at
various levels maintain highway/road trust funds financed from earmarked
gasoline taxes and other automotive related fees (Whitt 1982; Kay 1998). In
Europe there are no such monies earmarked for highway/road construction
and maintenance, and, instead, road projects must compete with other
spending priorities. Additionally, taxes on energy in Europe are generally much
higher than in the US, and, hence, there is a greater economic disincentive for
sprawled urban development there than in the US. Finally, land use decisions
in the US are made almost exclusively at the local level. This frequently results
in localities allowing new investments (for example, community developments,
industrial parks) in undeveloped areas that require substantial infrastructure
extensions (for example, roads, sewage) (Warner & Molotch 2000). In Europe,
to varying degrees, national governments make important decisions with
regard to land use, and this serves to place new investments close to already
existing infrastructure, as opposed to areas in the urban periphery where new
infrastructure has to be built to connect new investment (Beatley 2000).
US Urban Sprawl: A Comparative Analysis
With a political movement composed largely of local economic interests
historically championing urban expansion, the US has the most diffuse urban
regions in the world. Two indicators of sprawl are per capita automobile
ownership and automobile usage. In Kenworthy and Laube’s (1999)
international study of 46 cities, US cities together ranked highest on both
counts, with, in 1990, 604 automobiles per 1,000 people, compared with
Australian cities (491), Canadian cities (524), European cities (392), wealthy
Asian cities (123), and developing Asian cities (102) (1999: 529).
In 1990 each automobile in those US cities studied was driven on average
11,155 kilometres. In Australian cities, usage averaged 6,571, in Canadian cities
6,551, in European cities 4519, in wealthy Asian cities 1,487, and developing
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Asian cities 1,848 kilometres (Kenworthy & Laube 1999: 529). The ratio of the
average use of each automobile in the US cities compared to the others was:
Australia 1:70; Canada 1:70; Europe 2:47; wealthy Asian cities 7:50; and
developing Asian cities 6:04. The wide gap between automobile use in the US
and everywhere else prompted Kenworthy and Laube to note that ‘vehicle use
not ownership is the primary factor in determining outcomes such as
congestion, fuel use and emissions’. They go on to assert that ‘ if cities build
in compulsory car use through low density, heavily zoned land uses which
make travel distances long and the use of other modes very difficult, then high
car use is almost assured’ (1999: 530).
With comparatively high automotive usage, in 1990 the US cities studied had
the highest per capita emission of carbon dioxide resulting from private
transportation – 4,609 kilograms. The Australian cities emitted 2,774
kilograms per capita, the Canadian cities 2,675, the European cities 1,769,
wealthy Asian cities 997, and developing Asian cities 739. When diesel and
electric-powered transportation are factored in, total per capita emission of
carbon dioxide in the US was 4,683 kilograms (Kenworthy & Laube 1999:
603). This indicates that for the US cities studied, private transportation
powered by gasoline combustion engines (for example, automobiles, vans,
buses, and mid-sized trucks) was the primary source of carbon dioxide
emanating from transportation. Diesel (for example, commercial trucks and
public buses) and electrically powered (for example, subways) forms of
transportation contributed only 74 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions per
capita.
Kenworthy’s and Laube’s analysis also indicates increasing urban sprawl
globally. In 1980 the average distance to work for US residents was 13
kilometres. By 1990, that had increased to 15. In Australia distance to work
increased from 12 to 12.6 kilometres, in Toronto it increased from 10.5 to 11.2,
and in Europe from 8.1 to 10 (Kenworthy & Laube 1999: 611).
With much economic growth in the US throughout the 1990s occurring in
the highly sprawled and automobile-dependent south and south-west (Nivola
1999; Dreier et al. 2001), average distance to work and average automobile use
are likely to have increased. In Los Angeles, the average distance to work was
17.8 kilometres in 1990, while in Houston it was 19.1. In Los Angeles, during
1990, the percentage of people using public transportation to work was 6.7, in
Phoenix it was 2.1 and in Houston it was 4.1, respectively. By comparison,
New York City residents in 1990 had an average distance to work of 13.6
kilometres, and Boston residents 10.1; in New York 26% of people used public
transportation to work in 1990, and in Boston 14.7 % (Kenworthy & Laube
1999: 610).
The automobile industry in particular benefits from increases in urban
sprawl. It was estimated that in 2000 the automobile industry produced 25
million units – about 40% of total production – in excess of demand. Even so,
leading automotive firms, such as General Motors and Ford, significantly
under-utilise their production capacity; their capacity utilisation in 2000 was 74
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and 60%, respectively (Conybeare 2004: 37). As a result, increases in demand
can generally be met without any new investment in production capacity.
Dealing with Climate Change
The Kyoto Protocol, negotiated and signed in 1997 by 38 countries, put the
creation of a regulatory regime to curb the emission of climate change gases
onto the international political agenda. This has yet to result in an effort to
reform a major cause of the climate change phenomenon – sprawled urban
areas. Moreover, the modifications of the global economy advocated by
leading international business groups to abate the emission of climate change
gases would leave sprawled urban communities intact, and, ultimately, allow
them to sprawl further.
The Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol called on advanced industrialised nations to roll back their
emission of greenhouse gases – in particular carbon dioxide – by 2012. Overall,
industrialised countries were to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by an
average of 5% from 1990 levels by 2012, the US by 7%, the EU by 8%, and
Japan by 6%.
In 1998 the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a report
predicting the economic costs for the US associated with meeting its Kyoto
Protocol target. The EIA describes itself as an ‘independent statistical and
analytical agency in the US Department of Energy’ (EIA 1998, title page).
According to this report, in order to meet the Kyoto Protocol target coal
consumption in the US would have to drop between 18 and 77% from current
projected rates by 2010 (EIA 1998, xviii), and petroleum use would have to be
reduced between 2 and 13% (EIA 1998, xix). The upper range of reductions
represents a projection based on the assumption that the total reduction in the
emission of greenhouse gases stipulated in the protocol would be completely
absorbed by the US economy. The lower range represents a 24% carbon
dioxide emission level above the 1990 emission level, and it assumes credits for
sinks (e.g., forest) and international activities (such as trading of carbon
emission permits), but with some direct domestic actions to reduce climate
change emissions. The upper limit range represents a 542 million metric ton
annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from the US economy between
2008 and 2012, whereas the lower range would represent an annual reduction
of approximately 122 million metric tons. Both of these figures are compared
to no regulatory action being taken (EIA 1998, xii – xiii).
The Kyoto Protocol, by significantly increasing energy costs, would have
created substantial disincentives for urban sprawl in the US. According to the
EIA report, electricity prices increase from 20 to 86% in 2010 if the Kyoto
Protocol was implemented by the US (EIA 1998, xv), and ‘the average price’ of
gasoline would be between 11 and 53% higher (EIA 1998, xviii). Given that the
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European Union as a whole and Japan have more compact cities and emit less
carbon dioxide per capita than the US, their costs associated with reducing
carbon dioxide emissions are substantially lower than that of the US
(Nordhaus & Boyer 2000; Uzawa 2003).
Such price increases would undermine demand for spacious housing on the
urban periphery, and in turn create incentives for more compact communities
with smaller housing units and greater opportunities for inexpensive mass
rapid transportation (streetcars, subways, buses) (Betsill & Bulkeley 2004).
More dense urban areas, with smaller living quarters, would lessen demand for
land, automobiles, electricity, gasoline, appliances, and furniture. Particularly
significant for the automobile industry, densely organised communities,
coupled with increased fuel costs, could push consumers away from larger
and more profitable vehicles (for example, light trucks), which are substantially
less fuel efficient than smaller, less profitable vehicles (Bradsher 2002; Ford
2004).
The Kyoto Protocol was formally ratified by the requisite number of
countries in 2004 and went into effect in 2005. It is uncertain, however, what
kind of impact the protocol will have on global greenhouse gas emissions. One
uncertainty arises because Russia is able to count its 1990 greenhouse gas
emissions against its current obligations under the protocol. Russia, as part of
the Soviet Union, was among the leading emitters of greenhouse gases. Due
predominately to severe economic downturn in the early 1990s, Russia emits
roughly 30 to 40% less greenhouse gases today than in 1990 and can ‘sell’ those
reductions to other signatory countries that exceed their allotted emission
quota (Houghton 2004, ch.10; Kozlova 2004). A second factor undermining
the Kyoto Protocol is the fact that the US, the largest emitter of carbon
dioxide, has withdrawn as a party to it. Finally, the protocol’s 2012 target does
not include the industrialising countries of China and India.
While the Kyoto Protocol may not be translated into an effective
regulatory framework, it, and the politics surrounding it (Hovi et al. 2003),
communicate to the broader public that something is being done to address
global warming. This serves to assuage and mollify public concern (Edelman
1988; Cahn 1995).
Business’s Response to Climate Change
Three international business organisations have directly taken up the question
of climate change: the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), the World Business
Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the International
Chamber of Commerce (ICC) (Levy & Egan 2003). According to its website,
the GCC is an ‘organization of trade associations established in 1989 to
coordinate business participation in the international policy debate on the issue
of global climate change and global warming’.
3
Although the GCC ‘was
constituted as a U.S.-based organization and was focused on domestic
lobbying, a number of U.S. subsidiaries of European multinationals also
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joined, and the GCC quickly rose to be the most prominent voice of industry’
(Levy & Egan 2003: 815).
The GCC has been an active opponent of government regulatory action to
bring about reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Its approach, along with a
number of conservative think tanks (McCright & Dunlap 2000), has been to
question the science surrounding climate change (Levy & Egan 2003: 815).
Currently, the GCC states that the ‘businesses and industries that make up the
GCC’s member trade associations are active participants in voluntary
programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are part of the federal
government’s U.S. Climate Action Plan’.
4
The WBCSD
The ICC and WBCSD have not positioned themselves as opponents of climate
change science or governmental efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead, they have more clearly established themselves as business-led policy
discussion groups on the question of climate change. Such groups, made up in
large part of economic elites and members of producer groups, are venues in
which policy ideas are developed and discussed, and in which a political
consensus among members can be achieved (Barrow 1993: ch.1; Gonzalez
2001b; 2005; Domhoff 2002).
The WBCSD consists of global corporations with headquarters all over the
world. In 1996 the WBCSD had about 125 corporate members. Among its
members were Renault, Total, Fiat, British Petroleum, Shell Oil, Texaco,
Mitsubishi, and Toyota (Schmidheiny et al. 1996: xvi–xx). According to its
website, the WBCSD is currently a ‘coalition’ of 170 ‘ international companies
. . . drawn from more than 35 countries and 20 major industrial sectors.’ The
WBCSD also benefits ‘from a global network of 45 national and regional
business councils and partner organizations located in 40 countries, involving
some 1,000 business leaders globally’.
5
The WBCSD posits itself as a proponent of the ecological modernisation of
global capitalism, the notion that capitalism can/should be reformed to render
its operation more environmentally benign (Hajer 1995; Mol 2001; York &
Rosa 2003). Reforms consistent with ecological modernisation include the
development/deployment of technology (for example, electrically powered
vehicles), administrative schemes (for example, pollution permit trading), and
the reconfiguration of economic activities (for example, paperless transactions).
WBCSD’s mission is ‘to provide business leadership as a catalyst for change
toward sustainable development, and to promote the role of eco-efficiency,
innovation and corporate social responsibility’.
6
The WBCSD, however, advocates a narrow or ‘weak’ conception of
ecological modernisation to address global warming, relying heavily on
technology to address environmental degradation (Christoff 1996; Dryzek et
al. 2003). A more expansive or ‘strong’ conception of ecological modernisa-
tion would involve ecologically sensitive land management, entailing intensive
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usage of land, drawing residential and work areas closer together, and
creating smaller work and living spaces in urban areas, as well as moving
residents away from dependence on the automobile and toward more
ecologically benign forms of transportation, such as walking, bicycling, and
mass transit (Newman & Kenworthy 1999). By contrast, ‘Energy and
Climate: The WBCSD’s Itinerary’ outlines the steps necessary to address
global warming as: ‘in the short term, focus on energy efficiency; in the
medium term, sequestration of greenhouse gases as a path to a sustainable
energy future; and begin work on the long term energy solutions, cleaner
fuels and alternative energy sources’.
7
The WBCSD conducts what it refers to as sector projects where WBCSD
members, along with certain experts, discuss topics presumably central to
sustainable development. These six sector projects are: forest products
industry; mining, metals and minerals; cement sustainability initiative;
sustainable mobility; electric utilities; and financial sector. The sustainable
mobility and electric utilities sector projects are the most germane to the
question of climate change. The sustainable mobility project is made up of
British Petroleum, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Michelin
Group, Nissan, Norsk Hydro, Renault, Shell, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
Among this project’s self-defined ‘challenges’ in attaining sustainable mobility
is ‘reducing carbon emissions.’ In responding to this challenge this sector
project posits: ‘Vehicle Design and Technology: determine how developments
in road vehicle technology and design can affect sustainability.’ Another
answer is: ‘Fuels: explore the options for making fuels both sustainable and
affordable’ (WBCSD 2002: 12–13). In the realm of electric utilities, the key
solution forwarded by the sector project is ‘continuing to invest in research into
new technologies that will help to move the sector significantly further down
the sustainable development path’ (WBCSD 2002: 15).
Hence, the objective of the WBCSD is not to reduce throughputs in the
broad operation of the global economy to prevent climate change but to
minimise the greenhouse gases emanated in the production and use of
throughputs – especially those associated with energy consumption. The
shortcomings in WBCSD’s approach to global warming are twofold. First,
technological solutions could, as with nuclear energy, simply shift the
ecological stress created by one activity from one aspect of the ecosystem on
to another (Dryzek 1987). While greater reliance on nuclear power will reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, the production of nuclear energy and the disposal of
nuclear wastes both have significant environmental liabilities, which in the long
term could be just as environmentally degrading as climate change (Stoett
2003).
The second difficulty is that no technology has been forthcoming to
effectively confront the question of climate change within the current context of
global capitalism. No technology to date has been developed to allow current
rates of economic growth and consumption to continue without the externality
of global warming (or, alternatively, the creation of intractable amounts of
Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and Ecological Modernisation 355
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nuclear waste). Hydrogen is proposed as a clean and potentially affordable
replacement for fossil fuels, but ‘Unless there is a breakthrough in the
production of hydrogen and the development of new hydrogen-storage
materials, the concept of a ‘‘hydrogen economy’’ will remain an unlikely
scenario’ (Steele & Heinzel 2001: 345).
The ICC’s Commission on Environment and Energy
In contrast to the WBCSD, the ICC has a broad membership base. According
to its website, ‘ICC membership groups thousands of companies of every size
in over 130 countries worldwide. They represent a broad cross-section of
business activity including manufacturing, trade, services and the professions.’
The ICC’s website goes on to explain that its member
companies shape rules and policies that stimulate international trade and
investment. These companies in turn count on the prestige and expertise
of ICC to get business views across to governments and intergovern-
mental organisations, whose decisions affect corporate finances and
operations worldwide.
8
Among ICC members are AT&T, ChevronTexaco, Citicorp, ExxonMobil,
Fiat, Ford, General Motors, General Electric, the Japan Chamber of
Commerce, Nissan Motor, Procter & Gamble, and Sony.
9
The ICC conducts much of its policy work through commissions, ‘the
bedrock of ICC’, which ‘scrutinize proposed international and national
government initiatives affecting their subject areas and prepare business
positions for submission to international organizations and governments’.
10
One of the ICC’s 16 commissions is the Commission on Environment and
Energy, headed by the President of a Finnish energy conglomerate, and
Richard Holme, a retired director and current special adviser to the chairman
of Rio Tinto, an international mining firm. Holme is also on the Executive
Board of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
(WBCSD).
11
Like the WBCSD, the ICC Commission on Environment and Energy
advocates the development and deployment of technology to cope with climate
change. In a press release on 12 December 2003, Nick Campbell, chairperson
of the commission’s committee on climate change, is quoted as arguing that ‘it
is evident today that the widespread use of existing, efficient technology is
indispensable, and that a wide range of technologies will be needed’ to deal
with climate change. The press release also approvingly reports: ‘business has
for years been insisting that innovative technologies provide the most effective
economic solution to long-term risk to the climate through global warming’
(ICC 2003).
The ICC Environmental and Energy Commission’s Energy Committee
recently published a report, ‘Energy for Sustainable Development’, that posits
356 G. A. Gonzalez
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technology as the only solution to the economic and environmental issues
related to energy usage. It begins by noting the importance of inexpensive
energy to the global economy:
In economic terms, energy can represent a fairly small part of a nation’s
GDP, normally less than 5%. It is therefore an often underrated element
of national politics and economics. However it must be emphasised that
although energy can to some degree be substituted with capital and
labour, it is by and large an irreplaceable and vital element of a nation’s
economy, with links to virtually every other aspect. Therefore, active
involvement in energy policy discussions, research and planning is in the
long term interest of Business and Industry, as well as of society at large
(ICC 2002: 1).
In terms of achieving environmental and economic energy sustainability, the
Energy Committee eschews conservation and instead holds that:
In the coming decades there are several emerging technologies likely to
exert a major impact on the energy supply scene. Among these are: clean
coal (combined with carbon dioxide sequestering technologies) and
advanced and new nuclear reactors with further improved safety features
for public acceptance and better economy, synthetic gasoline and diesel
oil as well as carbon free alternatives for fuelling the transport sector.
New renewables, although not likely to provide a significant contribution
to energy supply for many decades to come, are nevertheless of great
interest for the future and therefore worthy of support for research and
development (ICC 2002: 2).
With regard to the specific issue of climate change, the author(s) of the
committee’s report write:
Achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions could be costly and with
impacts on competitiveness, employment, trade and investment. For
these reasons, the most economically feasible way to meet the long-term
challenge of climate change is through the development and global
deployment of innovative technologies that reduce or avoid such
emissions (ICC 2002: 6)
Conclusion
Especially since the Second World War, sprawling urban communities have
been an important source of growth in global economic demand – pushing up
consumption of such commodities as land, gasoline, electricity, automobiles
and household appliances (Olney 1991; Frumkin 2004). While increasing
effective global demand, urban sprawl has had the unintended consequence of
Urban Sprawl, Global Warming and Ecological Modernisation 357
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significantly contributing to global climate change. This is because urban
sprawl is predicated on large, inexpensive inputs of energy drawn from fossil
fuels. Without such large and relatively cheap inputs, urban sprawl to the
extent that it has occurred is seemingly unfeasible.
The methods of urban sprawl, labelled here the US model of urban
development, were perfected and politically championed by US real estate
interests beginning in the late nineteenth century. Today, additional economic
interests have taken a political lead in defending this form of urban
development (for example, the US oil sector’s active opposition to the Kyoto
Protocol). Also, the automobile industry is very aggressive in seeking to expand
automotive demand throughout the globe, especially in the developing world
(Conybeare 2004). The result of this political activity has been to keep urban
sprawl off the international political agenda as it relates to climate change.
With urban sprawl serving to help stabilise the international economy and a
key source of future economic growth, the leading international business
organisations seeking to address climate change – the WBCSD and the ICC –
have sought to do so through technology and have eschewed environmentally
sensitive land management. Such an approach to land management would
directly and assuredly reduce climate change emissions, and be consistent with
strong ecological modernisation. The WBCSD and the ICC instead advocate
weak ecological modernisation via technology that could potentially abate
greenhouse gas emissions or capture them, or, ideally, offer a cheap and clean
substitute for fossil fuels. But such technologies could be just as environmen-
tally damaging as greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, while one waits for
such technologies to develop and be deployed, the environmental effects of
climate change emissions could become irreversible.
Notes
1 The US has approximately 5% of the world’s population, but is responsible for about a quarter
of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions (Revkin 2001; Rabe 2004).
2 The US economic elite is composed of decision-makers within large corporations and of other
persons of substantial wealth. These actors are integrated into a cohesive elite or class through
social clubs, interlocking directorates of both private and public organizations, policy
discussion groups, and intermarriage (Barrow 1993: ch.1; Domhoff 2002). Altogether, the
economic elite compose roughly 0.5 to 1% of the total US population (Barrow 1993: 17). This
elite is a dominant factor in the development of public policy because it possesses the most
important political resources in the United States – wealth and income. These can be readily
converted into other important political resources, such as social status, prestige, deference from
others, legal and scientific expertise, organization, campaign finance, lobbying efforts, and
access to public officials (Barrow 1993: 16).
Given their substantial wealth, income, and high level of organization (namely, business trade
associations), producer groups are formidable political actors on their own (McFarland 2004).
Due to shared ideological, economic, and political interests, however, members of the economic
elite are normally able to draw in as political allies members of broad-based producer groups,
and vice versa (Domhoff 2002).
3 GCC (Global Climate Coalition) About Us: What is the GCC. Available at http://www.global
climate.org/aboutus.htm (accessed 2004 February 20).
358 G. A. Gonzalez
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4 GCC (Global Climate Coalition) About Us: What is the GCC. Available at http://www.global
climate.org/aboutus.htm (accessed 2004 February 20).
5 WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) About the WBCSD. Available
at http://www.wbcsd.org (accessed on 2004 February 20).
6 WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) About the WBCSD. Available
at http://www.wbcsd.org (accessed on 2004 February 20).
7 WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) Energy and Climate: The
WBCSD’s Itinerary. Available at http://www.wbcsd.org (accessed on 2004 February 20).
8 ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) How ICC Works. Available at http://www.iccwbo.
org/home/intro_icc/how_works.asp (accessed on 2004 February 23).
9 ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) ICC membership. Available at http://www.iccwbo.
org/home/intro_icc/membership.asp (accessed on 2004 February 23).
10 ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) How ICC Works. Available at http://www.iccwbo.
org/home/intro_icc/how_works.asp (accessed on 2004 February 23).
11 ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) Commission on Environment and Energy.
Available at http://www.iccwbo.org/home/environment/holme_bio.asp (accessed 2004 Febru-
ary 23).
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