Neat article on Treehugger showing several wicked-cool examples of buildings that keep cool using stored water, overlay walls and other techniques that used to be common, but have been largely abandoned as air conditioning became more available. These buildings return to their cultural roots while bringing 21st-century green technology into the equation.
I’m impressed—how about you?
This Malaysian architect has successfully done skyscrapers with green roofs terracing all the way up to the top of these very tall buildings. Cool!
You may have heard the slogan, “the greenest building is the one that’s already built.”
Think about it: You’re using existing resources, and those resources are already on-site. For the parts of the existing building that you can adapt or fix, you don’t have to mine or cut down anything, you don’t have to transport anything, and you don’t have to clear a new site out of farmland or forest.
Here’s a nice article on TriplePundit about a renovation of a former military barracks in Ft.Carson, Colorado into an office building. The project cost only a quarter of what a new building would have cost, and is green enough to be submitted for LEED silver certification. And that’s particularly interesting, because my understanding is that military barracks were typically built cheaply, quickly, and with little thought for conservation.
Another great example is the Empire State Building—which spent $20 million to achieve annual energy savings of more than $4 million. That works out to better than 20 percent ROI—at a time when you can’t even get 1 percent in a savings account. Not a bad investment!
Very interesting article on Sustainable Brands, “Climate Change – Good For Business” by John Friedman.
Friedman cites Richard Branson on the opportunties in the environmental field:
“I have described the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as one of the greatest threats to the ongoing prosperity and sustainability of life on the planet,” he says. “The good news is that creating businesses that will power our growth, and reduce our carbon output while protecting resources is also the greatest wealth-generating opportunity of our generation.”
And I agree. I have profiled many entrepreneurs over the years who are succeeding with creative green businesses. In many cases, they are creating whole new market sectors—such as an entrepreneur who saves water by selling a spray fluid that largely neutralizes the odor and stain of urine, thus substantially reducing a family’s need to flush.
What is perhaps most interesting about the Friedman article is his historical perspective of energy and transportation not only as wealth-generators, but as environmental problem-solvers for their time:
A high percentage of the wealthiest people in history – excluding despots and conquerors – have made their fortunes in the areas of energy, transportation and construction. The Rockefeller fortune was based on oil (energy), Andrew Carnegie (steel), Cornelius Vanderbilt saw the revolution from wind to steam engines and built an empire in shipping and railroads. Henry Ford took the automobile from the purview of the wealthy to a staple of the average American household by increasing production efficiency, thereby reducing costs for consumers and creating an entire industry that was much of the basis for the American economy for decades…
Indeed many of these changes in industry and transportation have followed the evolution from individual power (feet or paddles), to animal power (horses and horses and buggies) to steam (initially powered in the U.S. by wood and then coal) and finally to internal combustion and electricity. It is important to note that in addition to increasing speed and efficiency, many of these changes were furthered by the desire for more environmentally friendly alternatives [emphasis added]; streetcars and buses in New York were seen as a solution to the manure that was lining the city streets.
Of course, there’s an obvious caution here. The message from the past, viewed through the lens of 2012 and catastrophic climate change, is that sometimes, solutions to old problems cause greater problems. This is a principle that must inform us as we go forward, to avoid blundering into even worse situations as we fix the urgent problems we face.
The good news: we know a lot more about what works and what doesn’t. For instance, we already know that nuclear power is not a solution to climate change and has enormous catastrophic potential. We know that fracking to drill for natural gas not only pollutes water but probably causes earthquakes.
And we also know that we have to be careful to develop solar, wind, hydro, tidal, magnetic, and other clean, renewable energy sources in ways that are both environmentally and economically sustainable.
This is our mission, our duty, our responsibility. Let’s get it done—the right way.
I love arrangements that make clean and renewable energy available to the very poor. Here’s one I found in the very conservative UK magazine, The Economist, where homeowners or tenants get a very small solar system with a $10 initial deposit and then another dollar now and then as they use the power. At $80, they own the unit free and clear (or can upgrade to a larger one).
Tritten is Chairman of the Green Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag and a former federal environment minister.
The technology to capture energy generated by people working out on exercise equipment has been around for years. I read about eco-pioneers who would bike in order to watch TV, probably at least 20 or 25 years ago.
Yet even in very green-conscious Massachusetts, it’s taken until now for a fitness center to use the power its members generate.
Congrats to Energia, of my own town of Hadley, MA, for being the first partially human-powered fitness center in the state (and one of only 70 in all of North America, to get with the program (pun intended).
Jim Hightower, populist author and entertaining voice for common sense for decades (and a terrific speaker—if you ever get the chance, go hear him!) has a great article on the real agenda of those pushing the Keystone XL gas pipeline from Canada to Texas.
It’s to get that Canadian crude down to oil refineries in the free trade zone at Port Arthur, Texas—where it can be shipped overseas a lot more cheaply.
We Americans get the land takings, the toxic leakage, the interruption of wildlife habitat corridors and all the rest of the “good stuff”; foreign markets get the oil; prices in the US go up. Such a Deal!
Hightower is the former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture and a generally knowledgeable guy. I find him credible, and I trust his analysis.
Thanks but no thanks. Please spread this widely.
If you know anyone in the food industry, get them to read this article:
Industrial-food hubris is a mindset that has to stop.
In my post yesterday on oil-industry and think-tank funding of climate deniers, I deliberately used the term “catastrophic climate change” instead of the more common phrase, “global warming.”
You may be wondering why:
As change activists and marketers, we need to own the language we use, to frame today’s realities in messaging that is easy to grasp and hard to distort. (George Lakoff, among others, has written very eloquently on this.)
I heard one speaker several years ago suggest that “global roasting” would be more appropriate—his graphic description of what we can expect is essential reading for climate activists for the wreckage that our planet will become—but even that doesn’t do the problem justice.
Even the phrase, “climate change,” is not enough. “Catastrophic climate change,” with its extra alliterative power and clear focus on potential disaster gives people a frame they can grasp. I suggest we use this term in our messaging.