27-07-2021

tUeSdAy, JUly 27, 2021
5
Climate crisis risks subways into flood zones
Hiroko tABUcHi
Terrified passengers trapped in flooded
subway cars in Zhengzhou, China.
Water cascading down stairways into
the London Underground. A woman
wading through murky, waist-deep
water to reach a New York City subway
platform.
Subway systems around the world
are struggling to adapt to an era of
extreme weather brought on by climate
change. Their designs, many based on
the expectations of another era, are
being overwhelmed, and investment in
upgrades could be squeezed by a drop
in ridership brought on by the
pandemic.
"It's scary," said Sarah Kaufman,
associate director of the Rudin Center
for Transportation at New York
University. "The challenge is, how can
we get ready for the next storm, which
was supposed to be 100 years away,"
she said, "but could happen
tomorrow?"
Public transportation plays a critical
role in reducing travel by car in big
cities, thus reining in the emissions
from automobiles that contribute to
global warming. If commuters become
spooked by images of inundated
stations and start shunning subways
for private cars, transportation experts
say it could have major implications for
urban air pollution and greenhouse gas
emissions.
Some networks, such as London's or
New York's, were designed and built
starting more than a century ago. While
a few, like Tokyo's, have managed to
shore up their flooding defenses, the
crisis in China this week shows that
even some of the world's newest
systems (Zhengzhou's system isn't even
a decade old) can also be overwhelmed.
Retrofitting subways against flooding
is "an enormous undertaking," said
Robert Puentes, chief executive of the
Eno Center for Transportation, a
nonprofit think tank with a focus on
improving transportation policy. "But
when you compare it to the cost of
doing nothing, it starts to make much
more sense," he said. "The cost of doing
the tram system in rotterdam, the netherlands, has greenways designed to let the soil soak up rainwater,
reducing storm runoff.
Photo: robert evans
nothing is much more expensive."
Adie Tomer, a Senior Fellow at the
Metropolitan Policy Program of the
Brookings Institution, said subways
and rail systems help to fight sprawl
and reduce the amount of energy
people use. "Subways and fixed rail are
part of our climate solution," he said.
The recent flooding is yet another
example of the kind of extreme weather
that is consistent with changing climate
around the world.Just days before the
China subway nightmare, floods in
Germany killed some 160 people.
Major heat waves have brought misery
to Scandinavia, Siberia and the Pacific
Northwest in the United States.
Wildfires in the American West and
Canada sent smoke across the
continent this past week and triggered
health alerts in cities like Toronto,
Philadelphia and New York City, giving
the sun an eerie reddish tinge.
Flash floods have inundated roads
and highways in recent weeks, as well.
The collapse of a portion of California's
Highway 1 into the Pacific Ocean after
heavy rains this year was a reminder of
the fragility of the nation's roads.But
more intense flooding poses a
particular challenge to aging subway
systems in some of the world's largest
cities.
In New York, the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority has
invested $2.6 billion in resiliency
projects since Hurricane Sandy
swamped the city's subway system in
2012, including fortifying 3,500
subway vents, staircases and
elevator shafts against flooding.
Even on a dry day, a network of
pumps pours out about 14 million
gallons, mainly groundwater, from
the system. Still, flash flooding this
month showed that the system
remains vulnerable.
"It's a challenge trying to work within
the constraints of a city with aging
infrastructure, along with an economy
recovering from a pandemic," said
Vincent Lee, associate principal and
technical director of water for Arup, an
engineering firm that helped upgrade
eight subway stations and other
facilities in New York after the 2012
storm.
London's sprawling Underground
faces similar challenges."A lot of
London's drainage system is from the
Victorian Era," said Bob Ward, policy
director at the Grantham Research
Institute on Climate Change and the
Environment in London. And that has
a direct impact on the city's
Underground system. "It's simply not
capable of dealing at the moment with
the increase in heavy rainfall that we're
experiencing as a result of climate
change."
Meanwhile, the crisis in China this
week shows that even some of the
world's newest systems can also be
overwhelmed. As Robert E. Paaswell, a
professor of civil engineering at City
College of New York, put it: "Subways
are going to flood. They're going to
flood because they are below ground."
To help understand how
underground flooding works, Taisuke
Ishigaki, a researcher at the
Department of Civil Engineering at
Kansai University in Osaka, Japan,
built a diorama of a city with a bustling
subway system, then unleashed a
deluge equivalent to about 11 inches of
rain in a single day.
Within minutes, floodwaters
breached several subway entrances and
started to gush down the stairs. Just 15
minutes later, the diorama's platform
was under 8 feet of water - a sequence
of events Dr. Ishigaki was horrified to
see unfold in real life in Zhengzhou this
week. There, floodwaters quickly
overwhelmed passengers still standing
in subway cars. At least 25 people died
in and around the city, including 12 in
the subway.
Dr. Ishigaki's research now informs a
flood monitoring system in use by
Osaka's sprawling underground
network, where special cameras
monitor aboveground flooding during
heavy rainfall. Water above a certain
danger level activates emergency
protocols, where the most vulnerable
entrances are sealed off (some can be
closed in less than a minute) while
passengers are promptly evacuated
from the underground via other exits.
Japan has made other investments in
its flooding infrastructure, like
cavernous underground cisterns and
flood gates at subway entrances. Last
year, the private rail operator Tokyu,
with Japanese government support,
completed a huge cistern to capture
and divert up to 4,000 tons of
floodwater runoff at Shibuya station in
Tokyo, a major hub.
Still, if there is a major breach of
the many rivers that run through
Japanese cities, "even these defenses
won't be enough," Dr. Ishigaki said.
Mass transit advocates in the United
States are calling for pandemic relief
funds to be put toward public
transportation. "The scale of the
problems has become bigger than what
our cities and states can address," said
Betsy Plum, executive director of the
Riders Alliance, an advocacy group for
subway and bus riders.
Some experts suggest another
approach. With more extreme flooding
down the line, protecting subways all of
the time will be impossible, they say.
Instead, investment is needed in
buses and bike lanes that can serve as
alternative modes of public
transportation when subways are
flooded. Natural defenses could also
provide relief. Rotterdam in the
Netherlands has grown plants along its
tramways, enabling rainwater to be
soaked up by the soil, and reducing
heat.
"During the pandemic you saw the
way people got around on their
bicycles, the most resilient, least
disruptive, low cost, low carbon mode
of transit," said Anjali Mahendra,
director of research at the World
Resources Institute's Ross Center for
Sustainable Cities, a Washington-based
think tank. "We really need to do much
more with connecting parts of cities
and neighborhoods with these bicycle
corridors that can be used to get
around."
Some experts question why public
transportation needs to be
underground in the first place and say
that public transit should reclaim the
street. Street-level light rail, bus
systems and bicycle lanes aren't just
less exposed to flooding, they are also
cheaper to build and easier to access,
said Bernardo Baranda Sepúlveda, a
Mexico City-based researcher at the
Institute for Transportation and
Development Policy, a nonprofit
organization."We have this inertia from
the last century to give so much of the
available space above ground to cars,"
he said. "But one bus lane carries more
people than three lanes of cars."
The true cost of cooling our home
Between wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes, we're all feeling nervous about the future.
Photo: Antoine Maillard
Can climate anxiety be calmed!
Molly PeterSon
Three years ago, after the Woolsey Fire,
53-year-old Greg Kochanowski returned
to the Santa Monica Mountains and
drove past his own street without
recognizing it.The most destructive
wildfire in Los Angeles County history
had torn through his Seminole Springs
neighborhood, burning more than half
of the area's homes to the ground,
including his. What remained was "a
moonscape," he said - ash and char,
black and gray.
Losing his home was traumatic. But
losing his bearings in his own
neighborhood "scared the hell out of"
him, Mr. Kochanowski remembered,
and triggered new existential concerns
about climate change.Now he agonizes
over his 14-year-old daughter's future.
"What kind of a world will Ava grow up
in?" he said. "Will Southern California be
uninhabitable when she is my age?"
Mr. Kochanowski's sense of dread fits
into an array of sentiments often called
climate anxiety, a term that includes
anger, worry and insecurity stemming
from an awareness of a warming planet.
"I actually think many people have been
experiencing this silently and privately
for a number of years," said Renee
Lertzman, a climate psychologist and
consultant to businesses and nonprofits.
But "the conversation is no longer
marginal. It really has burst through."
Evidence that climate change
threatens mental health is mounting,
according to a recent report from
Imperial College London's Institute of
Global Health Innovation. Higher
temperatures are tied to depressive
language and higher suicide rates. Fires,
hurricanes and heat waves carry the risk
of trauma and depression.
Cascading climate-driven disasters
have forced American Red Cross
volunteers to stay in the field for months,
rather than weeks, said Trevor Riggen,
who runs the group's domestic disaster
programs. He noted that because of
climate change, the Red Cross has been
shifting from a focus on immediate
trauma, "to this more chronic condition
that needs a different type of mental
health intervention, or spiritual care."
Young people, especially report feeling
debilitated by climate anxiety and being
frustrated by older generations. "They
try to understand, but they don't," said
16-year-old Adah Crandall, a climate and
anti-freeway activist in Portland,
Oregon. "I am scared for my future
because of the inaction of adults in the
past."
Today, when the humidity drops, Mr.
Kochanowski sees the anxiety on his
neighbors' faces. Hot days stretch across
more of the year and dewy, cool
mornings are rare. Sometimes, he
wonders if they should move on."You
realize the larger forces that have always
been beyond your control," he said.
"That level of realization makes you feel
a little helpless."
Andi Poland, 49, a technical recruiter
who lives near Denver, said she too
experiences anxiety, grief and dread
about a hotter planet. "I am glad that I
am short for this earth," she said. "I
figure I have one-third of my life left. I
am not upset that I only have that much
time."
But experts say those dark emotions
can also be the basis for empowerment -
and progress. Writing in The Lancet,
researchers recently argued that climate
anxiety "may be the crucible through
which humanity must pass to harness
the energy and conviction that are
needed for the lifesaving changes now
required."
Anxiety is a rational response to the
growing risks of climate change,
according to Merritt Juliano, a therapist
in Westport, Conn., and the co-president
of the Climate Psychology Alliance
North America. But we shouldn't hide
from it or ignore it.
"Our emotions are not something to be
solved," Ms. Juliano said. Rather than
shove concerns about climate away,
people need to identify them and realize
they are there for a reason. "Embracing
them makes us that much stronger."
AliyA UteUovA
The widespread reliance on
air conditioning in the US is
explored in Eric Dean
Wilson's book After Cooling:
on Freon, Global Warming,
and the Terrible Cost of
Comfort. The book explores
how air conditioning has
become one of the most
effective ways to cool off - and
explains how harmful
chemicals that make our lives
comfortable also contribute to
the climate crisis.
The modern refrigerant -
gas in fridges, freezers and air
conditioners - was first
introduced in 1930s in the
form of a chemical called
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
better known as Freon. This
chemical escaped into the air
over time, ripping a hole in
the ozone layer. In 1987, a
global agreement was
reached to ban the production
of CFCs - although every year
an ozone hole reappears over
Antarctica in October.
HFCs, the chemicals that
replaced the banned
refrigerant, while not ozonedepleting,
their global
warming potential can be
hundreds to thousands of
times that of carbon dioxide.
Today, the most commonly
used refrigerant in air
conditioners and cars is
HCFC, which has much
smaller ozone-depleting
potential.
Wilson's book is not a call to
ditch air conditioners. He
acknowledges that in a
heatwave, refrigerants are
life-saving. Prolonged hot
temperatures can diminish
people's mental and physical
capacity, and air conditioning
is an effective heat
management tool in
classrooms. But before the
widespread use of
commercial air conditioning,
our world was cooler - and in
seeking comfort we have
warmed our planet.
In an interview, Wilson
reflects on the cost of
American comfort.Air
conditioners don't consume
or emit refrigerants directly.
But what the chemical
industry that produced air
conditioners claimed was that
they didn't send Freon into
the atmosphere. According to
the industry, it was totally safe
because it would never leak.
Well, that's not what happens.
What happens, especially
with car air conditioners, is
that when a refrigerant is
charged into a system, into an
air conditioner, it slowly, over
the course of like 15 years,
leaks.
And even if it doesn't, when
getting rid of an air
conditioner, the vast majority
of people just pass it on the
street, or put it in the dump,
or something like that, which
is technically illegal. But
there's no way to actually
regulate that. Just walking
down the street today, I saw
two air window units just
smashed on the street. It's
expensive to have somebody
come and take care of them
properly. And these units
most likely have HFCs.
There are replacements like
HFOs (hydrofluoroolefins)
that don't deplete the ozone
layer. All evidence points to
them being fine, but with each
subsequent generation of
refrigerants CFCs we've
thought they were fine and
they weren't. I'm not a
chemist, and I'm not an
atmospheric scientist, but I
see a pattern here that I'm
quite skeptical of.
In a heatwave, you have
people who are susceptible to
heat-related illnesses. These
are people who tend to live in
neighborhoods that have less
access to natural shade, fewer
trees, less access to parks,
more asphalt that absorbs
heat and can make areas of
the city 10F hotter in some
places.
Low-income residents are
also more vulnerable. Even if
they can afford the unit, they
might be reluctant to turn it
on because they might be
behind on their energy bills.
Also, what happens in the
heatwave is that everyone in
the city turns on their air
conditioner, and it overloads
the grid, and there's a
potential for blackouts.
One of the things that I
write about very briefly in the
book is pointing to the need
for things like community
solar, or communitycontrolled
energy, rather than
having a monopoly company
that controls it. Because when
profit is the driving motive,
monopolies are not interested
in saving lives.
The most lo-tech solution is
planting more trees.
Initiatives to make sure that
there is lush vegetation on
every street in New York.
Air conditioners outside a building in Seoul. the harmful chemicals that make our lives comfortable contribute
to the climate crisis.
Photo: yonhap