← The Urbanist
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:12]
Andrew Tuck
Hello and welcome to the Urbanist Monocles program, all about the built environment.
- [00:16]
I'm your host, Andrew Tuck.
- [00:18]
Dr. Gary Yohei
Coming up, you don't have to cite the scientific papers. Just be confident the science has your back. You're right. The climate is changing and it's getting worse.
- [00:28]
Andrew Tuck
What energy should we be taking into 2026? In order face climate change head on, we're joined by a Nobel Peace Prize recipient to discuss how our cities can reframe the narrative in an ever more divisive world to ensure that we can all be hopeful for our urban futures. Then we look back to our industrial past to honour the fading memory of a relic which forms a common feature on our city skylines. All that ahead in the next 30 minutes, right here on the Urbanist. With me, Andrew Tuck. Welcome to today's program. Late last year, I was lucky enough to speak with Dr. Gary Yohei, a professor of economics and environmental studies and a Nobel Peace prize recipient. In 2007, as a senior member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I wanted to get a view of the year just gone and how the conversation around climate change has shifted, as well as how we look ahead to 2026, as Dr. Yohei will explain, with rather than just pure optimism. I began by asking Dr. Yohei, given the fact that many leaders in the climate debate, such as Bill Gates, seem to have slightly reoriented their views in the past year, how he thought the climate change debate was evolving.
- [01:52]
Dr. Gary Yohei
I read with interest Bill Gates commentary. I have had the pleasure of spending some time, quite a while ago on my way to an IPCC meeting, to drop by Seattle and talk to him about climate and climate impacts. I was there with the then chair of the IPCC Working Group 2, Chris Field. We were asked to provide papers from the literature. We did. We thought we were going to present those papers, but he had read them all very carefully and he just had lots of questions. And what was supposed to be an hour meeting turned into a three and a half hour meeting. He kept telling his assistant, no, I'm not finished yet. Cancel that, do this, do that. And he was very engaged and he walked away thinking that climate was a problem that technology couldn't solve. I'm not sure in his heart he backed away from that. I don't think he thinks it can be solved. But he did say that there are other problems in the world that we should be worried about. And the United States pulling back from the Paris Accord and so on and so forth was only one example of the United States pulling back from the welfare for mostly the least privileged among us. And so I'm sympathetic to that, but I thought it was only a half of a presentation. He did focus on different places of vulnerability for personal welfare around the world and the need to move forward with respect to that. But he put them in silos and he didn't emphasize the degree to which they're all interrelated and that good, effective climate policy, be it mitigation to reduce the likelihood of extreme events or adaptation, reduce the consequence or preparation to reduce the residual suffering, that those have positive implications for the other things that he was worried about, just like the other things that he was worried about have implications with respect to climate policy, to the point where the things that he talked about in the other silos, if he had recognized, and I know he knows about them, but the interactions could have been advertised as well as really good climate policy, particularly with respect to adaptation. The determinants of the capacity of communities to adapt, it depends on lots and lots of underlying determinants, most of which would be strengthened by the initiatives that he spoke of outside of climate. So I was disappointed that it was so much like the old Bjorn Lomborg challenge, where he said, there's a certain amount of money that we can apply to these global problems. How would you rank them? And he took them one at a time. And it was one project that gets all of the money and one cost benefit analysis isn't really the way to look at climate or these other problems. They're really risk management problems. But secondly, there's nothing that says you have to do these things one at a time or focus entirely on one thing or another. The US pulled out of aid. There's a lot of room for him to do some work replacing the value of those initiatives. But there continues to be a lot of value for him to continue to push for climate policy in action. And I wish he had made that.
- [05:22]
Andrew Tuck
Connection at this moment. We're seeing in many countries a political atmosphere which is at least divided, where many political parties say, look, this isn't a debate for now, we need to address poverty within our country. As you say, I know these questions are interconnected and there is some weariness on the part of people who feel impoverished by economic change, that they're being left behind again, that find it sometimes difficult to see that this debate is connected to all those things as well. Do you think it is important to try and talk to people in a way that is engaging, positive, and doesn't fall into a trap of just the doom of what might happen?
- [06:01]
Dr. Gary Yohei
Yes, I do. Among other things, people need to be aware of the increasing likelihood of extreme events and the increase in their intensity and frequency, but not to the point where they throw up their hands and say, there's nothing we can do. I was led to read a little bit of some thoughts from Vaclav Havel when he was creating the Czech Republic. He didn't publish them until later, but one of them was, I think, really profound observation that there's a big difference between hope and optimism. Optimism I don't have with respect to moving forward into 2026, that things are going to turn around, that things are going to get better in measurable, meaningful ways, given the obstinates of what is not in this country a debate anymore. It's just, here's what I think. The science is wrong and this is what we're going to do. But the hope part allows you to think about what, what you could do to spend your time that might make a difference and use that to create the foundation for a meaningful life that is open and empathetic and takes into account the privilege that you've enjoyed as well as what would be a meaningful use of your time and talent that does not require the expectation that it will really make a difference. It might make a difference. And we can't use obstinance of some who happen to be in high powers as an excuse not to think about other people around the world and try to do something about that.
- [07:39]
Andrew Tuck
Tell me, how is the economics of climate change evolving? There are some who believe that this is a real challenge and there are real problems and we see extreme events, then market economies will step up and deliver solutions. Oddly, perhaps we're seeing more of that in a communist country like China at the moment than we are in the US. Where do you think the push for change needs to come from? From transnational institutions? From national governments? Or do you think there is a role for market forces to step in and for private industry to take over the fixing of this problem?
- [08:17]
Dr. Gary Yohei
There's certainly a role for everybody. It's an all hands on deck issue. The economics approach to the evaluation of various actions has evolved out of what was an almost insoluble or incredible, enormous cost benefit analysis, welfare maximization. If we do this for the next hundred years, things will be better or whatever. And it has evolved into an iterative risk management approach which does a number of things. First of all, it recognizes that we can't Write policy in 2025 that will last until 21, we will learn more things, things will change, economies will develop across the world, the underlying foundational data will evolve, and those things have to be taken into account as well as the new science and the new understanding. So the approaches, except when they can't be, need to be designed with mid course corrections to be expected at dates that are relatively certain. That requires the population not think that when the policies adjust to new information, that Everybody was lying 15 years ago when they said to do this. We can't go after them the way people went after Dr. Fauci when new information caused him to suggest different ways of approaching Covid. He didn't lie at the beginning. He was doing the best he had with the information that he had. But we get new information. That is fundamentally what corporations understand. They understand coping with risk. There are ways of taking advantage of the efficiencies of market economies through pricing, carbon or cap and trade. But as well, there was in the United States, following the example in Europe, new rules in the Security and Exchange Commission that companies, corporations, when they made their semiannual reports about their risks, had to include climate risks and risk to climate policy in their report to shareholders. And that allowed shareholders to exert their concerns over climate change and their decisions of where to invest. And it suggested that corporations would do well by competing with each other on protecting them against themselves, against climate risks and climate action risks. That has been taken away in some places, but I don't think in Europe. I think that still holds in Europe. That's an example of how corporations can get involved.
- [10:50]
Andrew Tuck
When you look at China, an economy that maybe a decade ago was seen as hell bent on discontinuing growth at any cost and was often pointed out as generating energy, all its energy, from dirty coal and from non renewable resources. Has it surprised you? Do you have positive thoughts about the fact that it said that their CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for the last 18 months? That they have become such advocates for electric vehicles, for electric transportation, for example.
- [11:21]
Dr. Gary Yohei
I don't know if I'm surprised. I didn't expect it, but it makes sense. China is trying to become a world leader and they've noticed that by taking a lead in providing the world as well as themselves, alternative clean energy sources like wind and solar, they're investing in the production of those capacities domestically and selling them abroad. They're spending enormous amounts of money in research and development into new technologies that will make those alternative sources of energy more efficient. And the consequence of that has been not only the leveling of China's emissions and the expectation that their emissions will start to decline fairly significantly. But also developing countries who are on the threshold of industrialization and expanding energy availability to large populations have seen a way to skip the fossil fuel step in the development pathway and go straight to alternatives and install solar and wind energy sources in replacement for anticipated investment in coal. And that is a really good step. It reduces those countries financial vulnerability to currency uncertainties because they're not importing coal and oil from the global market. They're creating their own energy within their own country using the energy of the sun and the wind.
- [12:54]
Andrew Tuck
We've seen more and more extreme climate incidents. You know, in the US when the LA wildfires took place, we saw the hit that that made to the economy of California. We saw then the impossibility of ensuring homes both in the run up to it and especially in its aftermath. Do you think we're still underplaying what the economic impacts of these events might be and how do we prepare for them?
- [13:20]
Dr. Gary Yohei
I do think so. I'm sort of sad to say that I, as well as lots of my colleagues and people that I write with, were always thinking that if one really catastrophic climate related event occurred and got everyone's attention, that it would break a logjam of people against action and give them the recognition that significant responses are required. And the California fires were sort of the paragon of what we thought might change people's minds. It was unexpected. It was definitely attributable to climate change. The long term drought they were suffering, the enormous heat, the historic strength of the Santa Ana winds showing up at the same place at the same time, creating fires not just in canyons and in forests, but in urban areas and places where people live and rich people, poor people, enormous consequences in a place which is a media capital of the world. So it was covered worldwide. Pictures of communities just burning to the ground and things like that. And it didn't happen. Everybody wrung their hands for a while and you know, there was concern about contagion across the US economy through the insurance and real estate markets. And that really didn't happen. So what do we do now? And I think that these days we're thinking that on a personal level people see these things, but they don't know how to factor them into their perception about whether the climate is changing. They can read the science and the counterfactual experiment that the planet is warming and humans are to blame. They can look at the correlation between the rising global temperatures and very, very damaging and dangerous heat waves. The hurricanes like the one that just went through Jamaica, Michelle, forming into category five with enormous speed because the oceans underneath them was at a record temperature that hadn't been disturbed by earlier hurricanes. So that that energy was there. And what we need to convince them of is that they can be confident as they look at these things, that there's just too much of this stuff going on. The climate is changing and I can articulate that to my friends and colleagues and where I work and where I worship and where I relax with confidence that you don't have to cite the scientific papers. Just be confident the science has your back. You're right. The climate is changing and it's getting worse and extreme events are becoming more intense and more frequent. You don't know where they're going to be.
- [16:06]
Andrew Tuck
Well, leave us with some thoughts for the year ahead. It must be always difficult for someone like you who knows all the numbers, who knows the data, who understands the risks that we face. What do you think for people listening to you today, whether you're running a company, whether you're an individual, a consumer, how do you navigate this complicated and potentially life threatening set of statistics and the real danger that climate change forces on us? When we think about our economies, we.
- [16:39]
Dr. Gary Yohei
Have to become aware, we have to believe what we're seeing in the intuition of the correlations that we make. We have to do the internal welfare, personal business wise, community wise, statewide benefit and cost comparison, some in dollars, some in human lives, some in just personal security, some in prices, all variety of things like that. And prepare yourself for businesses. Don't stop taking those risks into account for American investors. Don't be fooled into thinking that you can make money forever investing in fossil fuel supply and things that demand fossil fuel. Those markets are contracting, carbon free energy source markets are expanding and there's money to be made there and there's money to be made in new technologies that support that part of the market. For environmentalists, don't get terribly alarmed when the United States says, well, we're going to open more coal mines, that's fine, but coal doesn't burn in the mines, they have to sell it to somebody. And people have already made a lot of investment, investments in non carbon sources of energy. And the rest of the world is not making investments in that type of energy as much as they are in fossil fuels. Take notice of that and take advantage of it and process the information yourself.
- [18:11]
Andrew Tuck
My thanks there to Dr. Gary Yohei for joining me on the Urbanist. From our climate conscious future to our coal powered Past. Dotted around Britain and the rest of the world too, are a number of brutalist structures known as cooling towers. These relics of our 20th century industrial.
- [18:34]
History, which were most commonly used in.
- [18:36]
Power plants, are largely redundant in today's industry and as such are about to disappear for good. A beautiful book recently published by the 20th Century Society Honours these vanishing sculptural giants through a collection of photographs and essays. And I was lucky enough recently to be joined in the studio by the book's editor, Ollie Marshall. I began by asking Ollie to explain to those uninitiated with industrial history, well, that might include me what so called cooling towers actually are.
- [19:06]
Ollie Marshall
So cooling towers, or to give them their proper name, hyperboloid thermal towers, are enormous structures which act in industrial capacities to lower the temperature of water. So in post war power stations, which is where a lot of the ones we're most exc, they cooled the water which was passed through a boiler at very, very high temperatures, which literally turned the turbines which created power and electricity. They're also used in other capacities like chemical works or steel mills. But it's the power station ones that are really, really special. And these are to give your listeners a sense of scale. 350 to 400 foot high, some of these towers and the concrete from which they're constructed is only 7 inches thick. So they're a real tour de force of engineering, you know, the sort of poetry of applied mathematics in concrete.
- [19:55]
Andrew Tuck
If I was living not in the uk, if I was in Dortmund or in Barcelona, would these be part of my skyline heritage as well?
- [20:02]
Dr. Gary Yohei
They would.
- [20:03]
Ollie Marshall
They're not unique to the UK. The very earliest examples were developed in the 1920s in the Netherlands. It's something which is facing a lot of countries as they're reaching the end of their coal fired or fossil fuel power. And a lot of these stations are being decommissioned. So if you look internationally, there are some really interesting examples of what you can do with a redundant cooling tower. But yeah, you'll see them across Europe. Europe and across the world.
- [20:25]
Andrew Tuck
I guess when people have seen them, when they've been active, you often see what looks like smoke billowing out of them. And we associate them with not having clean air. But is that just steam then coming out?
- [20:36]
Ollie Marshall
It is. It's water vapor. Yeah. So again, you look at them and think they're churning out, pumping out smoke or steam into the atmosphere. But it is essentially water vapor from the cooling of the water that goes into the production of power.
- [20:47]
Andrew Tuck
You've made this book, you're concerned about their lack of presence, maybe in the future, on our skylines. Why do you like them?
- [20:54]
Ollie Marshall
Well, I think something we always point to is that the British countryside, the landscape is littered with the power generation from previous centuries. So we could think of gas holder frames, gasometers, the chimneys from mills or factories, smock windmills, lime kilns, and these were essentially purely functional structures. But over time they've gradually assumed the status of regional or national landmarks. And cooling towers are really just in the same tradition, if they get a chance. Anthony Gormley has called them man made volcanoes or the Stonehenge of the Carbon Age. And as we're nearing the end of that Carbon Age, we need to try and preserve something, some memory, some legacy from that.
- [21:35]
Andrew Tuck
How did you go about producing the book, then? Because you've got some interesting essayists come on board, you've got various photographers. How did you put together this portfolio of these amazing cooling towers?
- [21:47]
Ollie Marshall
So the launch pad for the book project was an exhibition that we staged probably a couple of years ago now at Margaret Howell, the fashion retailer in London. And for that we looked for a really varied and stimulating range of photographs. Now, there's obviously some exquisite archival photos of these towers in use over the past century, but as they are being decommissioned and demolished, there's also a kind of range of photographers that are documenting them before they go. So that combination of the old and the new, seeing them when they were initially commissioned and seeing them now towards the end of their life, is really compelling. It's really powerful. And equally, there's a lot of writers, poets, songwriters and lyricists who've woven cooling towers into their work and into their stories. We tried to feature a range of those as well.
- [22:30]
Andrew Tuck
Now, you were telling me before we quickly came on air that there is no kind of listing process for these. There's no one saying, look, you can't destroy these, so they could all vanish.
- [22:39]
Ollie Marshall
They could. So our organisation, the 20th Century Society, has submitted several listing applications to Historic England and to DCMS, the government. @ the moment, their policy is not to preserve or protect any of them, but it's just to have an extensive photographic record. And while some of those photos are exquisite, that's obviously no substitute for retaining some and keeping some. I mean, to give an idea of where we are. At their peak in the 1960s, there were around 250 individual cooling towers across the country. We're now down to 37 individual towers at about eight sites, and we're losing them at about six or eight a year to demolition. So by the end of this decade, they will all be.
- [23:19]
Andrew Tuck
Gone. Industrial heritage and industrial history is a tricky topic because in some places where they have seen, for example, industrial towns where there has been a leaking away of employment, of jobs, of traditional connections to, say, the coal industry or to steel plants, these symbols of that time are both loved in one way, but are a bit melancholic too. So when you think about having them protected, what's the engagement you're seeing with local communities? Are there people who say, I want that to stay? That's part of the world we grew up.
- [23:51]
Ollie Marshall
In? Absolutely there are. I mean, I think, you know, they do divide opinion, but something that's quite notable is that when they are brought down, when they are demolished via, you know, sort of controlled demolition, there's a flurry of excitement when they go. You know, it's very, very dramatic to see these things fall and crumple from the skyline. So you get local news crews doing vox pop with people. There's the excitement when the button's pressed and the dynamite goes, but actually afterwards there is this profound sense of loss. There's an absence and a sort of void there. Not just physically in terms of their presence on the skyline, but actually these were places where people worked. Their family were often employed with them over several generations. But also they're the kind of waypoint markers in the landscape by which we calibrate our journeys and where we are. You often hear the same refrain of, you know, it's how I knew I was nearly home when I saw the cooling towers and I glimpsed them from the train or from the car on the motorway. They were really powerful physical symbols.
- [24:45]
Andrew Tuck
In our landscape, these big beasts of our landscape. Do you go and see them when they're coming down, or is it too sad for you to see.
- [24:52]
Ollie Marshall
Them? It's like a slut film, isn't.
- [24:53]
Andrew Tuck
It?
- [24:53]
No. Well, I don't know. It's like somebody who's protected the last rhino, seeing one destroyed or shot. Are you sad when they come.
- [25:00]
Ollie Marshall
Down? Absolutely we are sad. I mean, you know, it is a huge spectacle, but like I say, we're losing them at a rate of six or eight a year now, so there aren't that many more opportunities. We've seen some demolished and we'll be there whenever any more come.
- [25:11]
Andrew Tuck
Down. Now, the book is a large format book, wider than taller, which allows you to have these epic landscape images because often there is more than one in a row. I was just looking through the book when you arrived. It was interesting for me. I hadn't really quite thought about the scale of them on the inside and they are unbelievably huge. Is there anything that could be done with them? Are they suitable as auditoria? Could they be concert.
- [25:38]
Ollie Marshall
Halls? Absolutely. I mean, you mentioned that scale. So, you know, 350 to 400 foot tall, that's two and a half times the height of Nelson's Column. Inside they're about three times the width of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. So they are vast. I mean, there's almost nothing comparable that has ever been built in Britain on that scale. I think again, if we look internationally, there are some really interesting reuses. In Germany, there's one called Wunderland Kalke where they've constructed an amusement park around a redundant cooling tower with a really theatrical telescopic ride that sort of ascends and then pops out the top of the tower so you have a view of the surrounding countryside. In South Africa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, there's a pair there that have been turned into an extreme sports centre. So you can scale the outside on a climbing wall up the kind of concave outer wall and then if you dare, you, you can do a bungee jump and a free fall jump from a bridge slung between the two of them. In Italy, there's a couple of really interesting ones. One is a heritage attraction with a viewing tower so you can overlook the Venice Lagoon. And in Milan, the Pirelli headquarters is literally constructed around the outside of a cooling tower with little gangways and walkways going to meeting pods within the tower. Some of your listeners may also remember a few years ago during the Beijing Winter Olympics, there was the slightly odd juxtaposition of the artificial ski ramp with a set of cooling towers behind them. And that's the Shugang Mills complex, which is reputedly the biggest regeneration project in Asia. And those have recently been converted into basketball courts. So, you know, the only limit is your.
- [27:08]
Andrew Tuck
Imagination. There are some amazing pictures. There's a picture here of St. Edward's Church in Brotherton, North Yorkshire, with Ferry Bridge B power station behind it. A picture taken in 1960. But what a skyline. It's like this industrial skyline and then this. I'm not sure how old the church is, but this amazing old church and a bucolic scene in front of it. The juxtapositions of these things are amazing. Is there a favorite one that if it came down to a last two or three, that would be on Ollie's hot.
- [27:35]
Ollie Marshall
List? On the hot list. That's a beautiful picture, isn't it that's Eric Damari. It's a very famous photo. Unfortunately, those towers are no longer there. Of the ones that are remaining, there's probably a couple that are particularly of interest. Some have been in the news a lot recently are those at Ratcliffe on Soar in Nottinghamshire. And that whole area was known as Megawatt Valleys. That's where a lot of these power stations were clustered. And Ratcliffe has a special place in history because it was the very last coal fired power station in Britain. It finally turned off and shut off the national grid in September 2024. So relatively recently, it's a bit.
- [28:08]
Andrew Tuck
Strange when you're inside and you come and see the blue skies, like James Tyrrell artwork or the Pantheon in Rome.
- [28:14]
Ollie Marshall
The original James Turrell.
- [28:15]
Andrew Tuck
Skyspace. And just tell me also the organisation that you work with, the 20th Century Society, I guess it's written on the tin. But your ambition is, is it the architectural heritage you may need.
- [28:25]
Ollie Marshall
Defend? So we're the national charity that campaigns to protect Britain's modern design and architectural heritage. So actually our remit encompasses buildings, yes, but also public art, gardens, landscapes, you know, street furniture. So it's pretty broad. We want to preserve one set. I think that's our realistic. Of those 37 that are left, it would be completely unrealistic and undesirable to try and keep all of them. But we think one representative set, you know, a cluster of four or six, should be preserved and should be reused and repurposed. I mean, another thing that you hear mentioned a lot of late is data centers and AI farms and the potential for housing some of those vertically within a redundant cooling tower. Those generate an awful lot of heat as a byproduct. And the natural updraft that you have within cooling towers could be quite attractive for kind of cooling those and lowering the temperature of those as well. So that's something we're exploring as.
- [29:15]
Andrew Tuck
Well. My thanks to Ollie Marshall, editor of the book Cooling Towers, and you can find your copy@c20society.org.uk and well, that's all for this week's episode of the.
- [29:31]
Urbanist. You can follow us.
- [29:33]
There. New editions of the show every week and you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by Carlotta Rubello and by David Stevens, who also edits the show. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City lover.