Lexington should use federal dollars for future sustainability, not sports facilities

Remember COP 26? No I’m not talking about Covid-19. Just a few short weeks ago the 26th in a series of meetings of heads of state of almost all the countries on the planet met in Scotland to continue their development of a program aimed at dealing with the existential global threat of climate change. Each of these 26 meetings has been more successful than the one before. Each has generated new, more stringent programs and agreements among the countries of the world to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat of global warming.

There is still a long way to go, but the growing momentum is unmistakable. Solar powered energy sources have already become the cheapest energy available. Renewables now constitute almost all new power generation in the U.S. As the cost of almost everything has been continually on the rise, for more than 20 years the cost of energy from sun and wind has continued to fall while their efficiencies have increased. Even the utilities and Big Energy, who have waged an expensive war against the adoption of renewables are starting to change their tune as they realize that fossil fuels can no longer compete with safe, clean, reliable wind and solar. It is now possible to build a Zero Net Energy Passive House that will cost the homeowner less money to finance, own and operate than a conventional home. Much of this evolution is being lead by governments around the world. Towns and cities around the country have been forging programs to support the rapid deployment of programs that will reduce greenhouse gasses and keep climate change at bay. At COP 26, the two most polluting countries on the planet have together agreed to institute programs and policies that will increasingly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When is the last time that China and the U.S. have agreed on anything of such momentous importance?

And what about our own fair city of Lexington, Kentucky, the recent recipient of a $120,000,000 windfall that makes it possible for us to invest in our sustainable future? Our Urban County government along with the mayor invited our citizens to submit ideas that will improve our common future prospects. They have collected more than 1000 proposals. Yet, so far I have seen nothing to suggest that Lexington is even considering ideas that will support any long term environmental or sustainable development ideas. To be sure, long term strong sustainability will need to be supported by numerous small, sustainability oriented approaches, but unless these activities are embedded in an overarching, civil society process that through innovation, coherence and wisdom will attract and synergize ever greater local participation and support, the program will languish and this one time opportunity will have been wasted. A grab bag of goodies just won’t do it.

We are living in an age when all things are becoming unstable – flying off in opposite directions. Our politics, our climate, our extreme weather events, our economy are all becoming unbalanced. We are systemically destroying the balances of nature. Yes, the small imbalances that Lexington proposes to alleviate by consuming its windfall are worthy of consideration, but we are loosing sight of the forest for the trees.

We cannot continue to try to solve our problems by expanding the size of the economy and in the process putting an increasing stress on nature’s vibrancy and resources whose health is the very basis upon which a vibrant economy depends. An urban ecosystem cannot be played as a zero-sum game.

Growth can be a good, but limited strategy , but it cannot be an unlimited strategy on a finite planet. Fayette County is also finite. It has only so much land. A sustainable expansion into the future can only be an expansion of quality, not quantity. What would quality look like in the fully realized Fayette/bluegrass of the future? It would be well to explore a full range of possibilities and foster those actions in the present that keep the best future scenarios viable. Above all, we would be wise to invest our new found, but temporary wealth into a program that promises to increase our future quality of life, rather than submit to the temptation to support the temporary satisfactions of the present.

Richard S. Levine is Principal Architect at Center for Sustainable Cities Design Studio and a retired UK Architecture professor.