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This planet will live interesting times during the next decade: A combination of a full size global financial crisis, of major environmental constraints, and of shortage of energy, water, and certain key commodities. Herald Tribune (11/22/07) quotes OECD saying in a recent report: “Losses in the distressed sub-prime mortgage sector of the United States could reach $300 billion, only a portion of which has so far been accounted for by write-offs at major banks… We still have not hit the worst point in resets, delinquencies and ultimate losses on mortgages." Lead by US financial markets, Europe and now China and others are getting closer to technical bankruptcy, when assets market value becomes lower than debt level. In China, the Chinese people discovering the joys of getting rich quick thanks to a booming stock market are applying to it their millennium old gambling inclination.

This financial crisis would be bad in the perspective of conventional free economy. What makes it worse is that the world economy, growing since 2000 at its highest level in some 40 years, demands more energy, more fresh water, and more commodities. Producing more fresh water means ultimately consuming more energy. Mining, growing and transforming more commodities whether agro, chemical, metal or mineral means the same. Ultimately, the world faces a massive energy shortage. But mankind is running out of areas in the world where local environment impact conditions combined with attitude of the local population are favorable to new power generation capacity. Nuclear is clean in CO2, but unpopular. Making it fool proof means higher costs. Coal can be made clean, even CO2 free, but at a higher cost of kWh bringing it a nuclear costs level. Oil and gas are available and can be CO2 clean as well (through CO2 storage for instance), but they don’t come cheap anymore. Renewable energy is available, but very expensive.

To increase energy capacity, we need to massively invest long term. Our financial markets have lost the ability to invest in anything which is not short term, low risk. This factor, combined with environment pressures, means that all new power plants run late. And their capital costs escalate with delays.

According to Greek mythology, when Jason and his Argonauts came to steel the Golden Fleece from Medea’s empire, Medea warned them that wherever they would go, she would, one day, send them the Bill. On top of our facing a combination of bankruptcy and energy shortages, our planet is beginning to present Medea’s Bill to mankind: We never paid for the investments engaged in natural phenomena which took from tens to hundreds of millenniums to generate the fossil reserves of the planet. Our planet did, beginning way before the first hominians began hunting and gathering. By doing so, the planet put in underground storage the CO2 levels which were five times higher than today in our atmosphere in the days of the dinosaurs. We are destroying these reserves as if they were free of charge, while putting back carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, as if the air and a stable climate were free of charge too. During this century, we will start paying Medea’s Bill, and the moratorium will completely change the way we perceive financial planning. This is the end of Stockholders Value Enhancement!

How shall we face this colossal challenge? We will from now on regularly talk about the options and solutions.

Andre Teissier du Cros

The city of Paris is planning on building new towers. Is this an initiative in the line of sustainable development ? The answer is complex, as are all those relating to ecology.

As of now, the Paris experience has been exemplified by the Montparnasse tower, which has mangled the totality of the capital’s most beautiful perspectives and has destroyed the magic of this Parisian district along with its urban plan. Other achievements include a tower dedicated to business offices, boulevard Morland, a few steps away from the Notre Dame cathedral: the Jussieu tower, famous for its asbestos; the 15th century towers, which needs refurbishing; also the towers from La Défense, an important business district which can be seen from the Tuileries as if under your nose...

When visiting the world, not one city has succeeded to maintain its sacred character, built throughout centuries because we were then giving time to time.

Is this a fatality? Does it mean being opposed to progress to be questioning or to be opposing the building of residential or office towers?

Let us understand the reasons justifying the high rise building: prices of building-sites, their scarcity, cars devouring all space, and efficacy of verticality for business buildings: Only economical reasons, none related to the quality of the citizen’s life. Elected members have their short term worries, property developers their financial obligations, architects their aesthetic concepts. Yet, how come Paris’ first arrondissement, just as dense in population as the district of La Défense, manages room for two big parks: the Tuileries and the Palais Royal, and yet none of its buildings is higher than 7 levels?

How does this relate to sustainable development ? very directly. Skyscrapers were, during the early 20th century, the symbol of triumphant modernity. Weren’t they also telling us about the actors’ inability to escape from the constraints of urban development?

Building residential towers has not given proof of providing appropriate living spaces. No doubt building office towers was an unavoidable stage at the time, even if it seems out-of-date today: more than thirty years ago, the question was already addressed by economists and urbanists, and it remains up-to-date. At the time of internet, video-conferencing and portable phones, along with the obligation to reduce costly and exhausting moves, couldn’t we think over the urban design a little more, trying to escape from economic fatality?

Sacred Planet does not have any ready-made answer to this question, but will assign the file to its experts in order to evaluate and compare the different experimentations and urban solutions throughout the world.