Committee on the Environment

According to the Department of Energy yesterday greenhouse gas production has risen 6% exceeding the worst case senario quantity.

Why is there not an occupy wall steet like movement over this or at least a headline?

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Bruce Spiegel AIA
The Phoenix New York Company, P.L.C.
Phoenix AZ
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Great question. Bill McKibben's 350 movement (www.350.org ) is the closest thing, but our federal government, the media and most of the US population have their heads in the sand on this one. We may not be able to chance all that, but our profession could certainly ramp up our commitment to AIA+2030. Bold and sustained action is required.

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Alan Scott FAIA
Principal
Green Building Services, Inc.
Portland OR
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Today is Election Day in the USA....

It may appear that most of our well intentioned public 'elected' officials are unable to rise above the fray and help the common good.  

With opposition to the status quo beginning to find a fever's pitch, all  around the world, in a non-violent, participatory democratic process, individuals have the right and responsibility to expose the injustices of policies and promote sensible plans to correct the imbalances, powers that be, have placed on earthlings.

One plan that would offer all architects, in all time zones all over the earth, to work, is found here:  http://goo.gl/TauHY

Although the step by step plan announces the use of proprietary software, the case study recognizes interoperability, allowing everyone's ability to contribute to rectifying climate change causation, due to constructing buildings and the operations of those same structures. As the plan demonstrates goals of Architecture 2030 Challenge, and, the Living Building Institute, are within reach...doable.

Yes voting is a right and a responsibility, so to is our "occupational" architecture obligation to create a healthy environment that enables such participation, permitting each of us to occupy the civic life.

Additional comments found here: http://goo.gl/ZlfrT

Let's not let the 6% continue to escalate Design Professionals. Let's promote sensible occupy-able plans and not deny and dismiss the facts of Earth's health, this election day.

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Michael Scarmack, AIA
Earth_Architect
Scarmack Architecture ':-)
Lancaster OH
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Why is there not an occupy wall street like movement over this or at least a headline?

Bruce Spiegel AIA
The Phoenix New York Company, P.L.C.
Phoenix AZ
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Thanks for the link Alan.
I think what would help is if we stop thinking about this as a political issue but one of survival.

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Bruce Spiegel AIA
The Phoenix New York Company, P.L.C.
Phoenix AZ
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-07-2011 00:33
From: Alan Scott
Subject: Greenhouse gases rise 6 percent

Great question. Bill McKibben's 350 movement (www.350.org ) is the closest thing, but our federal government, the media and most of the US population have their heads in the sand on this one. We may not be able to chance all that, but our profession could certainly ramp up our commitment to AIA+2030. Bold and sustained action is required.

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Alan Scott FAIA
Principal
Green Building Services, Inc.
Portland OR
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Hi Bruce,
There are many in the Occupy movement who feel that the climate and natural environment have been damaged by business as usual at least as much as our economies. I attended a local action today that was organized in solidarity with a much bigger one in DC. Maybe you're already familiar:

10,000 Surround White House in XL Pipeline Protest
(1) November 6th, Tar Sands Action Surrounds the White House

But I do have to agree that the lack of urgency, and sense of profound opportunity, are disturbing.


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Geoff Briggs Assoc. AIA
I & I Design
Seattle WA
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The OWS movement is attempting to address the root cause of collective ignorance, denial, and apathy towards anthropogenic climate change: excessive corporate influence on the political system and on the media that insures that policy and media messaging works in support of short-term corporate profits at the expense of long-term ecological and economic sustainability.

Protesting a rise in GHG emissions only addresses one of the symptoms, not the illness.

Cheers.

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Eric Shamp AIA
Owner
Ecotype Consulting
Redlands CA
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Philip Henshaw AIA
New York NY
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It's very appropriate for architects to be vocal about environmental impacts their work is aimed at reducing but someone else seems to be multiplying.  

The history is that energy use and GHG's have been growing by %'s (increasing in scale like the growth of the economy) throughout the history of economic growth.  I've long thought architects should respond to and try to alert others to that for some time.  Our solution isn't solving the problem if something else is having an overwhelming effect in the other direction.   

The root of the problem seems to be how money creates demand for energy uses all over the earth, invisibly outsourcing their services.   We have no way of knowing about what they are, and haven't asked either, and so we treat them as if they are not occurring.   I discovered that in looking for a true "before & after" measure of the energy use and GHG's for my design projects.  It turned out I had to find a way to rethink our whole way of measuring the energy use of things generally.  

What I came up with is now published as an important research paper in a special collection of sustainability science papers, edited by one of the scientists who helped create the "peak oil" and "EROI" (energy return on investment) discussions, Charlie Hall.   My paper is both elementally simple in principle and very complicated, for my having to expand scientific research methods in unfamiliar ways, to make it simple.   Systems Energy Assessment (SEA)

What I did that was so radical, but all seem to agree checks out, is when I didn't have direct measures of the energy content of things I estimated them as having "average" energy content per $, instead of "0" energy per $.   So in simple terms, the before/after impacts for the development site you're working on can be quickly estimated from the before/after rate of energy use per $ for the economy, applied to the development's before/after cash flow.  

Obviously... the conflict of interest is that everyone's motive is to make more money WHILE reducing energy use and GHG's... and that's usually not what's happening.   It doesn't answer the question, but points to a range of questions that we and our clients need to have been struggling with all along, but haven't.  

For sustainable design of buildings, the disturbing part is then that the metric of interest is not the on-site energy efficiency of technology.  It's the scale of consumed + outsourced energy uses in total.