Page 99 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

76 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

exchanges have closed or combined with others. The problem is often cited as
the lack of supporting governmental (European Union or by nation) policies,
but the real issue is that the economics does not work as well as the control
over carbon emissions. The trading and auction mechanisms furthermore, do
not provide direct and measurable solutions to the problem of emissions and
its impact on climate change. A far more direct finance and economic
mechanism as proposed by several EU nations and China would be to have a
“carbon tax.”
An important lesson from the FiT policies in Germany came from two -
decades of the policies from 1990 through 2007. As Chart B shows, Germany
learned that a moderate or small FiT was not sufficient to push renewable
energy systems like solar systems into the mainstream of its economy. In short,
far more aggressive use of the FiT type of financing and/or direct carbon taxes
needs to be made. On its own the solar industry would not move fast enough
into the GIR. In many ways, this is the lesson for other nations. In fact, the
reality of the 2IR historically has been to have strong and continuous gov-
ernment incentives from the late 19th century to the present day. The definition
and model of economics of a market remains critical in understanding how the
United States can move into the GIR. Consider now how Japan and South
Korea did just that: moved into the GIR with strong government leadership and
financial support.

Japan and South Korea are Leaders in the Green Industrial
Revolution

It took an extraordinary political transition to prompt Europe to open the door
to the GIR, whereas Japan and South Korea in particular have taken a
completely different path. And now China is moving aggressively ahead in the
GIR. Most of the information and data below will be focused on China (Clark,
2009). For example, China led the United States and the other G-20 nations in
2009 for annual “clean energy investments and finance,” according to a new
study by “The Pew Charitable Trusts” (Lillian et al., 2010, p.4):
Living in a country with limited natural resources and high population density,
the people of Japan had to work on sustainability throughout their history as a
matter of necessity. With arable land scarceesome 70-80% of the land is
mountainous or forested and thus unsuitable for agricultural or residential
useepeople clustered in the habitable areas, and farmers had to make each acre
as productive as possible. The concept of “no waste” was developed early on; as
a particularly telling, literal example, the lack of large livestock meant each bit
of human waste in a village had to be recycled for use as fertilizer.
Along with creating this general need for conservation, living in close proximity
to others inspired a culture in which individuals take special care in the effect
their actions have on both the surrounding people and environment. As such, a