Municipal sustainability plans typically include laudable environmental goals, but they rarely explain the connection between these goals and a larger conception of sustainability. In this article, we examine one local sustainability plan, Philadelphia's Greenworks, through a city-based, rather than per capita-based, ecological footprint (EF) analysis. Our objective is to theoretically establish the extent to which at least one of the items in Greenworks-to have 20% of the city's electricity come from alternative energy sources-might reduce Philadelphia's overall energy footprint if implemented within the municipal boundaries. By moving away from the idea that per capita energy footprints add up to a citywide energy footprint, we posit that a city can reduce its overall energy footprint by utilizing internal resources, even if the total land used for that respective energy were to increase. For many cities this will result in the use of renewables, such as solar, biogas, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and other creative solutions. By extending at least one component of Philadelphia's sustainability plan through EF analysis, we provide a hypothetical example of how municipal sustainability goals might contribute to a larger goal of urban sustainability, at least in the limited sense that they become less reliant on outlying resources.
To deny someone the right to water is tantamount to denying them the
right to life, and to set a price on water is to set a price on life. It
comes as no surprise then to find a good amount of anxiety and contention
over who gets to set the price of water and how much they charge. And over
the past two decades, throughout both the developed and developing world,
setting the price of water has fallen increasingly to private companies at
the same time as various demographic changes have increased water
scarcity. Thus we hear water described simultaneously in terms of both a
humanitarian crisis of global proportions—one standard though very
rough figure is that more than one billion people lack access to safe
drinking water (Davis 2005, 146; Black 2004, 28)—and as the “oil of the
21st century” (Wessel 2005).
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