It is 6am in Budapest, Hungary. I am near the Castle for the upcoming GDN Conference on Cities. My 25 minute "plenary speaker" presentation is a work of wonder. If it is well received, I will provide a link for my slides in the near future. But, now I would like to celebrate the Munich Airport. For those of you who believe that Los Angeles has the world's best airport (I'm kidding), permit me to name a counter example. The Munich Airport has some real charm to it.
1. Clean toliets
2. free newspapers
3. free coffee
4. good food (my son ate multiple sausages and I actually enjoyed my pretzel role sandwich).
5. Swiss Army Knives for sale (my son is now armed with something that has a finger nail clipper along with several other functions).
6. roomy and low population density (I thought Europe was down on sprawl?)
In contrast, Los Angeles airport is like a big bus station. It appears to have built in 1940 and has "the worst of both worlds" feel to it. It reflects a time when the USA wasn't rich but didn't have style or old world grace either. Durable capital has real costs. As a believer in progress, it is sometimes necessary to wipe out the old capital stock and start again.
Switching Subjects: at the LAX airport the other day, my wife was killing time looking at the magazines for sale. In the new issue of Popular Science, there was a piece by Grist's Dave Roberts discussing climate change adaptation. I can't find a link on line but my wife and I agree that his points look a lot like my Climatopolis logic . This makes me happy because when I went to Grist's offices in Seattle in September 2010 (on my ill fated Climatopolis book tour), the Grist team were dismayed by my points about getting ready for the inevitable of climate change and the productive role that capitalism will play in helping us to adapt. Perhaps Led Zeppelin was wrong, the "song doesn't have to remain the same". I would like to see other liberal climate bloggers such as Joe Romm begin to have an honest discussion about adaptation rather than continuing with the diminishing returns to DEBUNKING those who disagree with him.
