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Fossil fuel’s role in transportation is probably the greatest culprit in the generation of global warming. A close second is the way we design and construct buildings. Around the country you will see a host of new facilities with a LEED certification, (Leadership in Energy and Engineering Design) indicating excellence in green ways to build. To be certified, points must be accumulated dealing with energy conservation, water use, site development and more.
A new office building and community center is currently under construction in Southern California. It is the first of its kind in the United States and so far surpasses every LEED category that it cannot even qualify as LEED certified! “Greenspace” is a “superadobe” building. The design was originally developed by Nader Kihilili, an Iranian architect. From the ground breaking to completion, the carbon footprint will be zero. Solar panels will supply the electricity needed during the construction, and on completion solar power will generate more energy than the new building will consume. Passive heating and cooling will be used throughout, and all interior daytime lightning will be natural. Using newly developed techniques, water use will be minimal.
Superadobe is a structural system which uses the on-site dirt as 90% of its construction material. The earth, mixed with a little water and cement, is packed into long polypropylene bags, wound into vaults like potter’s clay and held in place by barbed wire.
Building costs are about a third of traditional stick or steel construction. Funds for the building have come via a grant flowing from a class action suit related to pollutants generated in the reformulation of gasoline! The building, on the site of a United Methodist Church, will be the home of “Uncommon Good” a wide-ranging non-profit social service agency. Last month’s groundbreaking was the topic of world-wide press attention.
I have gone into what may appear to be a semi-interesting pedestrian development because I am passionately concerned with global warming. “Greenspace” provides a tiny ripple of hope. With few exceptions the world’s leading scientists have warned us that unless we turn the corner and stop the excessive generation of wastes from hydrocarbons, civilization as we know it cannot continue to exist. I know this doomsday prediction may sound like hysterical ranting, but it is a warning we ignore at our peril. The ice caps are melting. The oceans are rising. Weather systems are out of control. Why are there so many floods? Warmer air holds more moisture, and that means storms. On the other hand, some parts of the world are experiencing the opposite, with droughts expanding the deserts at an alarming rate.
While part of the warming may be the natural result of long-term changes in temperature, scientists are almost unanimous in declaring that human activity is largely responsible. The complaint that slowing the rate of global warming may cost jobs must be factored into any radical change in direction. But that is a chronic condition, and human generated global warning is a critical issue. If a cancer patient shows up in an emergency room bleeding to death you treat the cut, not the cancer. The earth is hemorrhaging. That is the crisis which demands immediate attention. Many of us are convinced that we can move aggressively in green development that will create a whole new industrial base and millions of jobs coming on line as the result. Government funded R and D is the key economic resource. Private labs and industries are supplied with the research grants and do the necessary development. It’s a win-win situation.
To deny government’s role is not only ill-founded, it is it is embarrassingly short-sighted. The future belongs to nations and industries developing the jobs of the future. And that means private-public cooperation. The environmental crisis will not go away. Hiding our heads in the sand because economic and political concerns like it the way it is now just perpetuates our culture’s fatal mistake.
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