To get serious about sustainability, move back to the city.

According to Witold Rybczynski (writing in The Atlantic), it's time to get serious about living sustainably. Currently, we do that by going out to buy the latest and greatest gadgets for saving energy. There's a much better foundation for accomplishing this goal of living sustainably:

The problem in the sustainability campaign is that a basic truth has been lost, or at least concealed. Rather than trying to change behavior to actually reduce carbon emissions, politicians and entrepreneurs have sold greening to the public as a kind of accessorizing. Keep doing what you’re doing, goes the message. Just add a solar panel, a wind turbine, a hybrid engine, whatever. But a solar-heated house in the burbs is still a house in the burbs, and if you have to drive to it, even in a Prius, it’s hardly green.
Instead of putting little Band-Aids on the big problem, Rybczynski argues that we ought to move back to the city. We would save much more energy by prohibiting spread-out low-rise buildings than by pasting solar panels on them. "A reasonably well-built and well insulated multifamily building is inherently more sustainable than a detached house." He advocates three or four story "walk-ups," which don't require elevators. These can create sufficient density "about 50 people per acre, to support public transit, walk ability and other urban amenities." Another important approach is to focus on the way we construct our commercial buildings. When we combine residences with commercial and institutional structures, buildings consume 48% of our energy, more than any other sector.

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HVAC sanity in Japan

How often have you gone into a store or business in the summer, where you needed to wear a sweater or coat to stay comfortably warm? Think movie theaters, for example. No doubt, Americans waste a lot of energy over-cooling in the summer and over-warming in the winter. Think of those businesses that keep their doors open in the winter, heat spilling out into the frigid outdoors. When we bought a Christmas tree this year, the lot was using propane heaters to heat the outdoors. As reported by Newsweek, Japan is using common sense in an effort to make itself less dependent on foreign fuel and in an effort to reduce carbon emissions:

In 2005, Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, a pioneering female politician, was seeking ways to slash energy use. And she came up with the Cool Biz campaign. The idea: Government would cut energy bills by keeping thermostats in its buildings at 28 degrees Celsius—82.4 degrees Fahrenheit—during the summer. It quickly produced results and was adopted by the business establishment as well. Since Japan's energy mavens realized that simply unbuttoning a shirt collar can make people feel about 4 degrees cooler, dressing down became part of the Cool Biz mentality. (Here's an ABC News story on the phenomenon.) The only people we met with this week wearing suits, ties, and cufflinks were Americans.

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We can do a much better job constructing energy-efficient buildings

In the April 3, 2008 addition of Nature (available online only to subscribers), an article entitled "Architects of a Low-Energy Future" indicates that we can do a much better job in building energy-efficient structures.  This opportunity is critically important (as discussed in an earlier post regarding architect Ed Mazria of the…

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Taking views and other things for granted

I have the privilege of working in an 15th floor office with a view.   Most people with offices downtown wouldn't consider my view to be a great view (because I can't see the Arch or the baseball stadium from my window), but it's interesting enough that most people who come to my office look out the window…

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